Rebel Toll In Najaf Battle Grows
U.S. military officials say U.S. troops fought with insurgents overnight near the southern holy Shiite city of Najaf, killing 64 gunmen and destroying an anti-aircraft system belonging to the insurgents.
The fighting, which began Monday night and involved helicopter gunships, lasted several hours, a military spokesman said. No further details of the fighting or anti-aircraft system were given.
The battles came as around 200 U.S. forces made their first deployment inside Najaf, moving into a base that Spanish troops are vacating about five miles from the city's holy shrines near where a radical Shiite cleric is holed up.
U.S. commanders have said they will not move against the shrines in order to capture Muqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters have launched attacks against the U.S.-led forces.
Elsewhere, CBS News Correspondent Lisa Barron reports Iraqi police have moved onto the streets of Fallujah, but it is still not clear when they will begin joint patrols with U.S. Marines, according to the plan announced over the weekend.
U.S. Marines battled Sunni guerrillas around a mosque in Fallujah's Jolan district, a poor neighborhood where insurgents are concentrated. U.S. helicopter gunships joined the battle, which sent heavy black smoke over the city. Tank fire demolished a minaret from which U.S. officials said gunmen were firing.
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The planned joint U.S.-Iraqi patrols in Fallujah are a key part of the U.S. effort to establish a semblance of control over the city without a wider assault, which would revive the bloody warfare seen earlier this month. The United States decided to try the patrols after Mr. Bush consulted with his commanders over the weekend, and the cease-fire was extended in part to allow for patrols to be organized.
On Monday, U.S. troops came under a heavy insurgent attack in the city. Eight suspected insurgents and one U.S. Marine were killed.
The U.S. troops met "a real nasty bunch," said Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, commander of the U.S. military's 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. But he said the violence would not deter the plans to begin patrols.
The fighting in Fallujah is the latest violence to shake a two-week-old cease-fire. Still, U.S. officials said they want to press forward with a political track, a day after abruptly toning down threats to launch a full-out assault on the city.
"We will take the time necessary to see if there is not a political solution," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday. "But as you saw today, when our soldiers and our Marines are attacked, they will respond and they will respond with force to protect themselves."
In Najaf, night footage taken by the Associated Press Television News, from a road between Najaf and the nearby town of Kufa, showed U.S. army helicopters flying low over plumes of smoke rising from a green area and the sparks of flashes, likely from gunfire.
Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, Monday heightened warnings about the reported stockpiling of weapons in "mosques, shrines and schools" in Najaf and his spokesman noted that such actions make the sites fair targets for military action.
"The coalition certainly will not tolerate this situation," Bremer said in a statement addressed to residents of Najaf. "The restoration of these holy places to calm places of worship must begin immediately."
Bremer's spokesman, Dan Senor, would not elaborate on steps the coalition was ready to take to do so. He noted that in the case of military action, "those places of worship are not protected under the Geneva Convention" if they are used to store weapons.
The Spanish base in Najaf is pockmarked with shells and shrapnel from earlier attacks. The golden domes of the Shiite shrines at Najaf's center - a no-go zone for the Americans - are visible from inside the compound. Spanish troops are due to leave within days, and the Americans moved in to ensure al-Sadr militiamen did not overrun the site.
The base, which houses Salvadoran and Spanish troops, is in the modern part of Najaf, an urban extension that melds with the neighboring city of Kufa.