Battles flare as Iraqi Shi'ites vow resistance

Followers of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr fought pitched battles with foreign troops in Shi'ite Muslim strongholds yesterday and vowed to pursue an uprising that has claimed more than 130 lives in three days.

The bloody clashes with Shi'ites that have raged since Sunday are a new front for US-led forces already fighting an insurgency in Sunni areas and trying to pacify Iraq ahead of a June 30 handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi government.

Since Sunday the US military has suffered 19 combat deaths in Iraq - 11 of them in clashes in Shi'ite areas and six in al-Anbar province where Marines have launched a major mission to root out guerillas in the Sunni cities of Falluja and Ramadi.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, in London for talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said thousands more troops might be needed to maintain order.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said if commanders on the ground requested additional forces, they would be sent.

"They will decide what they need and they will get what they want," he said.

The latest reported US death was a soldier killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in a Shi'ite area of Baghdad yesterday. A Ukrainian soldier and a Bulgarian civilian truck driver were killed in Shi'ite regions of southern Iraq.

The Ukrainian soldier was killed in a blast near the town of Kut that also wounded five others, Ukraine's defence ministry said. Bulgaria's foreign ministry said the driver was killed when a convoy of six trucks was attacked south of Nassiriya.

In Nassiriya, gun battles erupted before dawn between Italian troops and pro-Sadr militiamen who had taken control of key bridges in the town. Paola della Casa, a spokeswoman for the occupation authority in the area, said 15 Iraqis had been killed, some of them civilians but most of them militiamen.

The Italian military said 12 soldiers had been wounded. Fighting between militiamen and security forces in Amara, in the British army area of responsibility, killed 15 Iraqis in the last 48 hours, Britain's ministry of defence said.

The Bulgarian military base in Kerbala came under heavy grenade and machinegun fire, Bulgaria's defence ministry said, and Spanish and Polish troops also clashed with militiamen.

Iraq's health ministry said 66 Iraqis had been killed and 317 wounded in clashes in Shi'ite areas of Baghdad since Sunday.

US President George W. Bush vowed the campaign by Sadr's supporters would not derail Washington's plans for Iraq, but the youthful cleric said he would fight on regardless.

"This insurrection shows that the Iraqi people are not satisfied with the occupation and they will not accept oppression," he said in a statement issued by his office in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf.

Qays al-Khazali, one of Mr Sadr's aides, compared the uprising to a 1991 Shi'ite rebellion eventually crushed by Saddam Hussein and said it would go on until the cleric's demands were met.

"The uprising will continue and we will not negotiate unless they fulfil our demands, which are a withdrawal from populated areas and the release of prisoners," he told a news conference.

A US official said on Monday an Iraqi judge had issued an arrest warrant for Mr Sadr several months ago over the murder of a Shi'ite cleric last year. Mr Sadr's group has denied involvement.

Mr Sadr's supporters said he was in his office in Najaf. They would resist any attempt to detain him.

Mr Sadr also appealed to all Iraqis, whatever their religion, to join together to expel occupying troops.

"God will support our brothers the Sunni to liberate their areas which of course are also our areas because we have one destiny and one goal," his statement said.

In Falluja, armoured columns of Marines entered the city centre yesterday afternoon, with helicopters buzzing overhead. Hospital doctors said at least three Iraqis had been killed in fighting, including a teenage girl, and seven wounded.

The mission - "Operation Vigilant Resolve" - follows the killing of four US private security guards in the town last week. A cheering crowd set the bodies ablaze and hacked them up.

Mr Rumsfeld said soldiers searching for the guerillas who killed the security guards had captured a number of people.

"The city is isolated. A number of people have resisted and been have killed. It will be a methodical effort to find the individuals who were involved," he said.