[Marxism] US military BOASTS of killing 300 in Najaf as fighting spreads

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At the rate things are going, there may  be a victory parade down Wall
Street to celebrate the next My Lai. Maybe Lynndie England should
replace Cheney on the Bush ticket.
Fred Feldman

LATIMES.com August 6
300 Militants Killed in 2 Days, U.S. Says
By Henry Chu, Times Staff Writer


NAJAF, Iraq - Fierce battles between coalition forces and militants
loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr spread to more cities today
as concern mounted over whether the fighting could be contained or would
escalate into a full-blown rebellion.

Violent clashes over the past two days have left at least 45 people dead
throughout Iraq, 20 here in the capital alone. U.S. military officials
said they had killed as many as 300 militants in the holy city of Najaf,
where the anti-American Sadr is based. But the cleric's deputies
disputed that figure, estimating that about 35 members of his Mehdi Army
had died.

The latest U.S. figures are far more than earlier estimates from U.S.
and hospital officials of about 13 dead and 48 wounded.

Also today, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most senior Shiite cleric,
was flown to London for medical treatment involving his heart. His
condition remained unclear. One aide told the Associated Press that the
73-year-old cleric "needs special treatment, but he is not in a
deteriorated state." The widely respected cleric has played an important
role in urging national unity in Iraq.

>From Najaf, the latest conflict spread to the southern cities of Amarra,
Nasariya and Basra and northward to Baghdad, where more confrontations
erupted in the Sadr City slum and gunfire ricocheted through the Shulla
neighborhood, another Shiite stronghold. U.S. troops hastily imposed a
dusk-till-dawn curfew on Sadr City on this evening.

Caught under a rain of bullets, rockets, shells and bombs that had Najaf
residents cowering in their homes, Sadr issued a sermon today blasting
the U.S. as "the greatest of Satans."

"The Iraqi president says that America is our friend. I tell you,
America is our enemy," the Al-Arabiya network quoted Sadr as saying.

At the same time, his spokesman here insisted that the Shiite Muslim
leader was ready to reinstate the truce shattered by the violence that
began Thursday.

"There is no need to use force in solving this problem," Sheik Mahmoud
Saudany told reporters. "We want to solve it peacefully.. [But] we will
not stand idle if we are subjected to an attack."

Each side blames the other for provoking the fighting, the heaviest in
Najaf since U.S. forces and the Mehdi Army began negotiating a
cease-fire in May. American troops withdrew from parts of the city and
agreed not to operate around the sacred Imam Ali and Kufa mosques.

But U.S. Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American military
commander in Iraq, said that Marines had tightened their ring around the
two mosques and were concentrating firepower on a sprawling cemetery,
next to Imam Ali, where militants had set up camp.

F-16s dropped satellite-guided bombs on the graveyard Thursday.

"The cemetery is a tough nut to crack, because there are caves and a lot
of other places to hide," said Brig. Gen. William Troy, chief of staff
for the international forces in Iraq.

Buildings were aflame and shops shuttered as residents deserted the
streets to escape danger. The air reverberated with explosions and
gunfire. A boy whose home near the mosque had been bombed lay wounded in
the street, then died after passersby got him to a hospital.




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