Najaf

THE PARADOX of Najaf is that the stakes in that city are much higher for the new Iraqi government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi than they are for the rebel cleric he confronts, Muqtada al-Sadr. With a battle shaping up between the two sides, failure would be a crippling blow to the prestige of Mr. Allawi - and his American allies. Yet no matter what happens to Mr. al-Sadr - up to and including his martyrdom - his Mahdi Army will survive to fight another day. A large U.S. force, working jointly with Iraqi government units, has penned up the Sadrists in the Old City.

NAJAF, Iraq -- Clerics and politicians speak in hushed tones about the names drawn up for assassination. Guards stand outside their compounds clutching assault rifles, and handguns rest on desks. No one can be trusted. All sides fear that dark times are coming to Najaf, the spiritual capital of Iraq's Shiites. "The situation is mysterious," said Sheik Ali Najafi, the son and confidant of Grand Ayatollah Bashir Najafi, one of the four senior Shiite clerics in Iraq who guide the country's majority faith and counsel its politicians.

NAJAF, Iraq -- Clerics and politicians speak in hushed tones about the names drawn up for assassination. Guards stand outside their compounds clutching assault rifles, and handguns rest on desks. No one can be trusted. All sides fear that dark times are coming to Najaf, the spiritual capital of Iraq's Shiites. "The situation is mysterious," said Sheik Ali Najafi, the son and confidant of Grand Ayatollah Bashir Najafi, one of the four senior Shiite clerics in Iraq who guide the country's majority faith and counsel its politicians.

BAGHDAD -- A senior aide to the radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was shot to death yesterday as he returned home from Friday prayers in Najaf. Police declared a curfew in the Shiite holy city and put reinforcements on the streets, fearing a backlash by al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia provoked by the killing of Sayyed Riyadh al-Nouri. Security officials in Najaf said he was in al-Adala neighborhood, a half-mile east of Najaf, when the gunmen pulled over and opened fire, killing him instantly.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - In the aftermath of the three-week battle for Najaf, interim Iraqi government officials yesterday inspected the extensive damage and pledged to undertake major reconstruction efforts. But though the holy city was quiet, violence flared elsewhere in Iraq. Much of the deadly activity was in the so-called Sunni Triangle region, which had been relatively calm during the conflict in Najaf. There was also violence in anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's stronghold in Baghdad's Sadr City slum.

NAJAF, Iraq - Three weeks of urban warfare killed at least 1,000 Iraqi rebels and civilians, the governor of this battle-weary city said yesterday in his first estimate of the death toll since the standoff ended two weeks ago. During last month's relentless close-quarters combat between U.S. troops and militants loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, hospital officials and military officers had estimated the death toll in this southern holy city had...

NAJAF, Iraq -- A car bomb exploded yesterday near the gates of the sacred Shiite Muslim cemetery here, killing at least 12 civilians and injuring dozens in the latest assault on the country's Shiite majority. Among the dead and wounded were women and children visiting the graves of relatives at the sprawling cemetery, the most revered in the Shiite faith because it lies next to the shrine of Imam Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad and the sect's most venerated figure. "Why? Why?" cried Mohammed Hussein Kadhim, whose 14-year- old nephew Karrar bled to death from shrapnel that lodged in his skull.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunfire erupted in the Shiite holy city of Najaf early today as clerics, civic authorities and tribal leaders vowed to present a proposed peace plan to U.S. occupation authorities in the coming days. Militiamen loyal to militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr were seen in the streets after midnight headed toward the gold-domed shrine of Ali, a major Shiite Muslim site. Residents said U.S. troops were moving deeper into the city, which is largely in the control of al-Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's paramount Shiite cleric unexpectedly returned to Iraq yesterday and thrust himself into the bloody standoff in Najaf, calling for a nationwide march on the holy city in a bid to quell three weeks of fighting between U.S. forces and Shiite rebels. The call for peace from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani -- whose words have sent thousands into the streets in the past -- could be a pivotal turn in the showdown between rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

NAJAF, Iraq - Heavy clashes erupted in this holy city yesterday between Iraqi and U.S. forces and followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, shattering a two-month cease-fire and inciting his militia to rise up in three other cities. The battles in Najaf killed two U.S. troops, five Iraqi police officers, several civilians and at least a dozen al-Sadr militants. Amid the fighting, the cleric put out a call to arms, urging his supporters to "confront this infidel enemy." The clashes marked the fiercest fighting in southern Iraq since May, when U.S. troops began negotiating an end to a standoff with al-Sadr that had crippled the cities of Najaf and Kufa and fueled unrest and anti-American sentiments among the nation's large Shiite Muslim population.

The War I Always Wanted By Brandon Friedman Zenith Press / 255 pages / $24.95 They have stories to tell, those dusty soldiers who trek through the airport in their desert uniforms and worn boots and thousand-yard stares, on their way home from Iraq or on their way back. Most will never tell their stories: They're too painful and the humor too black, altogether too complicated for someone who wasn't there. An exception is this infantry lieutenant whose memoir of Afghanistan and Iraq is a book you'll want to read parts of aloud to somebody.

BAGHDAD -- Gunmen killed an aide to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the southern city of Basra, police said yesterday, the latest in a string of attacks targeting associates of Iraq's leading Shiite cleric. Also, civilian deaths rose in August to their second-highest monthly level this year, but American combat deaths in Iraq have dropped by half in the three months since the buildup of 28,000 additional U.S. troops reached full strength. U.S. officials had predicted that the increase would lead to higher American casualties as the troops "took the fight to the enemy."

Baghdad -- Two nearly simultaneous car bombs rocked the district containing Baghdad's most revered Shiite Muslim shrine yesterday, apparently in an attempt to escalate sectarian bloodshed and derail the latest security plan. Iraqi police said at least seven people were killed and 27 injured in the blasts. The U.S. military, which also responded to the attack, said no one was killed and four were injured. The bodies of at least 37 Iraqis were found in other violence across Iraq yesterday, and the U.S. military announced the deaths of four soldiers in the past two days.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- An Iraqi lawmaker with close ties to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said yesterday that he saw the Shiite Muslim leader four days ago in Iraq, continuing a war of words with U.S. officials about al-Sadr's whereabouts. U.S. officials told reporters this week that the anti-American cleric had left Iraq weeks ago, possibly to avoid a security crackdown beginning in Baghdad. His Mahdi Army militia has clashed at times with U.S.-led forces. But lawmaker Fattah al-Sheik said in an interview that he met with the cleric in the holy city of Najaf, where al-Sadr lives.

NAJAF, IRAQ -- Amid war and confusion, a messiah rises up from the sands of the desert promising to deliver the end of time. On the outskirts of a holy city, he gathers his fighters for the apocalypse. But his plan is betrayed. By dawn, government soldiers surround him and his followers, killing him and hundreds of others. The story line of the cult-like Heaven's Army and its leader, Dhyaa Abdul-Zahra, seems to belong to a long-ago epoch. But the Iraqi and American soldiers fighting an intense battle Sunday against hundreds of disciples of the Muslim group near the ancient city of Najaf met a modern enemy, armed not only with an unorthodox religious fervor but also with high-tech weapons, according to Iraqi officials.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi and U.S. forces killed several hundred fighters apparently planning to attack a Shiite Muslim shrine in the holy city of Najaf yesterday during a daylong battle in which a U.S. helicopter crashed, killing two U.S. troops, Iraqi security officials said. The fighting, on the eve of the Shiite Muslim holiday of Ashura, came as a mortar attack killed five teenage girls at a school in Baghdad and the daily civilian death toll nationwide again climbed past 100. Iraqi security officials offered conflicting accounts of the identity and motives of the heavily armed fighters in Najaf, variously describing them as foreign fighters, Sunni Arab nationalists, loyalists of executed former dictator Saddam Hussein or followers of a messianic Shiite death cult.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Fierce battles in the streets broke a fragile peace in the holy Shiite city of Najaf yesterday, less than a week after U.S. forces and members of firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia called a truce. At least four people, including three members of al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army, were killed in the fighting that began late Wednesday between Iraqi police and militiamen, said Sheik Abdel Sahara al-Suedi, a spokesman for al-Sadr. Hospital officials said six Iraqis were killed and 29 were wounded, including eight children, according to the Associated Press.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. forces backed by tanks and helicopter gunships battled yesterday to contain a widening Shiite rebellion, pushing deep into the holy city of Najaf and encircling the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City. U.S. commanders in Najaf said they had killed 300 members of the rebel militia loyal to renegade Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr since fighting flared there Thursday. But the figure could not be independently confirmed, and a spokesman for al-Sadr said the toll was 36. Two Marines were killed Thursday, U.S. officials said, bringing to three the number of U.S. deaths in the worst fighting in more than two months.

BAGHDAD -- A day after a suicide bomber killed 35 people at a Shiite shrine, clerics across Iraq called yesterday for an end to the sectarian killing that one imam described as "waking every day to the view of blood." The bombing near the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf on Thursday ignited fresh sectarian passions that lingered in sermons in Shiite and Sunni mosques. Some Muslim clerics wondered whether Iraq had slipped too far, becoming a nation where the sounds of weeping mothers and praying imams are lost in the din of kidnappings, explosions and slaughter.

NAJAF, Iraq -- A suicide bomber struck at a checkpoint to a revered Shiite mosque here yesterday, killing 35 people and threatening to further agitate sectarian violence as U.S. and Iraqi troops intensified operations in Baghdad to rout militias and death squads. The morning attack near the Imam Ali mosque came when a man detonated an explosives belt while police wrestled with him at a checkpoint in a market square. The blast, injuring 122, shook the stones in the old city. "I was pausing near the gate of Imam Ali and all of a sudden there was a huge explosion, and I fell to the ground, and smoke and the smell of gunpowder covered the place," said Aqeel Kharsan, a souvenir photographer who works in the market square.