Baghdad — Shiite militiamen and Iraqi authorities fought for control of the police headquarters in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday in the first skirmishes since a recent agreement to end weeks of bloody clashes. Four Iraqis were killed and 13 were injured, hospital and militia officials said.
Gunmen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr attacked the station near the city's Revolution of 1920 Square after authorities tried to arrest suspected thieves, police and witnesses said. Mr. al-Sadr's spokesman, Qais al-Khazali, said the police shot first and that the fighting continued because the family members of one slain fighter were seeking revenge.
“We are trying to convince them to stop shooting,” Mr. al-Khazali said. “We are still committed to the truce.”
Two of Mr. al-Sadr's followers were killed and several were injured, Mr. al-Khazali said.
American troops were not involved, police said. However, Mr. al-Sadr's militia see the Iraqi police as being collaborators with U.S. forces.
The fighting comes only days after Mr. al-Sadr agreed to send his fighters home and pull back from the Islamic shrines in Najaf and its twin city of Kufa, handing over security to Iraqi police. The U.S. Army also agreed to stay away from the holy sites to give Iraqi security forces a chance to end the standoff.
In northern Iraq, saboteurs blew up a key oil pipeline earlier Wednesday, forcing a 10 per cent cut on the national power grid as demand for electricity rises with the advent of Iraq's broiling summer heat.
The pipeline blast near Beiji, north of Baghdad, was the latest in a series of attacks by insurgents against infrastructure targets, possibly to shake public confidence as a new Iraqi government prepares to take power June 30.
As world leaders applauded their newfound unity in passing a U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraqi sovereignty, Iraq's Kurdish leaders protested that the United States and Britain refused to include an endorsement of the interim constitution in the U.N. resolution. The Kurdish leaders expressed fears they will be sidelined politically by the Shiite Arab majority.
UN diplomats said the decision was made to keep a reference to the interim constitution — the Transitional Administrative Law — out of the resolution to appease Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who grudgingly accepted the charter when it was approved in March.
Barham Salih, 44, of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and an American favourite, announced Wednesday he would not accept the post of deputy prime minister for national security unless the powers were spelled out “appropriate to the position, sacrifice and important role of the Kurdish people,” the PUK's KurdSat television reported.
U.S. and other multinational forces will remain in Iraq after the new government takes power at the end of the month under terms of the U.N. resolution.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi described the vote as a victory for Iraq because it declares an end to the military presence when a constitutionally elected government takes power in 2006 — or before, if the Iraqi government requests it.
“The resolution is very clear that once Iraq stands on its feet, then we would ask the multinational forces to leave Iraq,” Mr. Allawi said. “This is ... an entirely a government issue.”
In Rome, three Italians returned home Wednesday, a day after they and a Polish hostage were freed by coalition forces. Kidnappers had held the Italians for two months.
“We're home, we're home,” shouted Maurizio Agliana, a towering, burly man who gave the thumbs-up sign after embracing his sister on the tarmac of Ciampino airport.
The men did not know that a fourth hostage abducted with them, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, had been executed.
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. officer in Iraq, said the men were freed south of Baghdad. However, Premier Silvio Berlusconi said they were found in Ramadi, a hotbed of the Sunni Muslim insurgency west of Baghdad.
