Najaf siege ends

2004-08-26 17:04

Najaf - The gates of Najaf's Imam Ali shrine were forced open on Thursday by a sea of weeping and chanting Shiite Muslims, ending a siege which had lasted for weeks of fighting with United States forces.

Yet as the camp of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, who led a rebellion against the US-led forces and the new Iraqi government, went into talks with the country's highest Shiite authority, the military standoff appeared far from over.

Akir Hassan, 63, awoke early to heed a call by his spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to leave his village south of Kut to converge on the revered mausoleum.

He and the others were greeted like heroes by the 300 besieged Sadr militiamen inside.

Most of the demonstrators were Sistani supporters.

Sadr's Mehdi army fighters brandished their Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers as they watched the seemingly endless flow of marchers flowing into the holy site.

Posters waved in soldiers' faces

Some of them were looking for relatives they have not seen in months, others pounced on biscuits, sweets and soft drinks.

Further up the stream of at least 20 000 demonstrators, in the Al-Jadida neighbourhood outside the Old City, a surreal scene unfolded as bewildered American soldiers trapped in their tanks watched as posters of Sistani and Moqtada posters were waved in their faces.

The presence of the US troops in the neighbourhood underlined that the battle was not over and that a tense "armed truce" could follow the jubilation.

US forces were still deployed all along the edge of the sprawling Valley of Peace cemetery, one of the largest in the world, as well as in several neighbourhoods outside the Old City.

Several incidents rattled the truce within minutes of the end of the siege.

A group of fighters who ventured into areas which they had lost to the Americans in recent days were shot at by US soldiers as they tried to retrieve dead and wounded they had been unable to reach for several days.

At least six bodies were brought to the makeshift clinic inside the shrine while the other wounded, including some who were in urgent need of medical care, were gradually being evacuated to Najaf Hospital.

Bursts of automatic gunfire and sniper shots from the cemetery could still be heard two hours after the marchers broke the deadlock.

Dead buried in shrine cellars

Many of the pilgrims who volunteered to serve as human shields in the shrine in the past few weeks to support Sadr were already heading home.

The besieged shrine had become increasingly insalubrious in recent days.

Food shortages were looming and the dead had to be hastily buried in cellars.

The marchers themselves weren't spending much time in the compound, as many of them already started heading back.

"I have done my duty," said one, "now I have to go home. I hope the talks will quickly bring a solution".

- AFP