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Journalists forced out of Najaf
15/08/2004 17:39 - (SA)
Najaf - Iraqi and foreign journalists, including an AFP correspondent, left the strife-torn holy city of Najaf on Sunday under the threat of arrest by police who had ordered them out.
"We order you to leave the city immediately, otherwise you will be under arrest," a senior police officer told the AFP reporter in the hotel where he was staying."
"From now on this city is closed. All the demonstrators who came in the last two days must also leave," he added, referring to supporters of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr who had descended on Najaf.
Heavy clashes have pitted Shiite militiamen loyal to Sadr against besieging US and government forces for the past 10 days, and low-level fighting resumed on Sunday after peace talks broke down.
A government official said a major assault against Sadr's Mehdi Army holed up in an important Shiite shrine and the city's vast cemetery was imminent "to bring the Najaf fight to an end."
Najaf police chief General Ghaleb al-Jazairi had announced at 10:00: "I received orders from the interior minister who demands that all local, Arab and foreign journalists leave the hotel and city within two hours."
"We have information that there is a 250kg car bomb targeting them," he claimed. "Therefore, you should leave the city immediately for your own safety".
Mohammad Kazem, an Iraqi correspondent of Iran's Al-Alam channel, was later seen on television being detained at gunpoint by Iraqi police while he was giving a live broadcast from a Najaf rooftop.
It was the first time that the caretaker government has banned journalists from operating in an area since it assumed sovereignty from the former US-led occupation authority on June 28.
Last Sunday, the government closed down the Baghdad offices of pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera for a month, accusing it of inciting violence.
- AFP
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