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Iraqi gov't team meets Sistani in battered Najaf Five Iraqi ministers visited battle-scarred Najaf on Saturday and discussed plans for rebuilding the holy city after three weeks of fighting that killed hundreds and drove oil prices to record highs.
They drove through a shattered urban landscape, inspected the city's Imam Ali shrine and held talks with Iraq's most revered Shi'ite leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who brokered a deal to end the clashes.
Fighting between the Mehdi Army militia of rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who had been holed up in the shrine during their uprising, and U.S. and Iraqi forces ended on Thursday when Sistani returned after medical treatment in London to Najaf.
"We have come to Najaf to consolidate the peace settlement we reached and to congratulate Sistani," Minister of State Kasim Daoud, who led the delegation, told Reuters.
The ministers arrived outside Najaf in two Black Hawk helicopters and were driven through streets littered with wreckage and ammunition into its old city in a convoy led by police cars with sirens wailing.
After inspecting the shrine -- the holiest in Shi'ite Islam -- Daoud said it was now free of weapons. He said the government hoped to reopen it to the public within 10 days.
The ministers held a 20-minute meeting with Sistani to discuss the government's plan to rebuild Najaf and to restore water, electricity, sewage and hospital services.
HOSTAGE TAKERS WARN FRANCE
Najaf seemed peaceful, but violence elsewhere in Iraq showed the size of the task facing interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi as he prepares for elections in January.
An Iraqi militant group kidnapped two French journalists and gave the French government 48 hours to end its ban on Muslim headscarves in school, Arabic television station Al Jazeera said on Saturday.
Jazeera identified the hostages as reporters George Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot. Last week, the French Foreign Ministry said the two men had gone missing in Iraq.
It named the group as the Islamic Army in Iraq. On Thursday, Jazeera said the same group killed Italian freelance journalist Enzo Baldoni because Italy refused to withdraw troops from Iraq.
Surveying Najaf streets strewn with mangled vehicles and mortar shells, the ministers promised the city would be rebuilt.
"The destruction is huge," Health Minister Alaadin Alwan said. "Najaf is going to be a big priority in the budget of the government. It needs a great deal of work to rebuild it."
Public Works Minister Nasreen Berwari said the government would "bring Najaf back to what it was before the war."
Under the peace deal brokered by Sistani, Sadr's fighters and U.S. forces withdrew from the area and security was handed over to Iraqi police. The government agreed not to arrest Sadr.
"The only thing the fighting accomplished was the destruction of Najaf. Look at our hotel. We were just making progress building it," said hotel employee Rafaat Maher, standing on a balcony pockmarked by bullets and looking down on a makeshift roadside graveyard for victims of the fighting.
"They are not rebuilding Iraq. They are destroying it. I must have seen 100 people buried there in front of the hotel." After Saddam Hussein's fall, residents of Najaf hoped for peace and prosperity, with the city's holy sites attracting Shi'ites long oppressed by the former ruler. Hotels and businesses sprang up. But fighting between Sadr's militiamen and U.S. forces has taken a heavy toll. At one makeshift graveyard, residents exhumed the bodies of people they said were militants from Sadr's Mehdi Army and a few civilians. The fighters' names were written on pieces of paper stuffed into small medicine bottles and placed above the graves. They were described as "hero martyrs." RENEWED VIOLENCE In the Shi'ite slum district of Sadr City in Baghdad -- from where the militant cleric draws much support -- Iraqis clashed with U.S. troops on Saturday, witnesses said. In Falluja, a city west of Baghdad that is seen as a haven for insurgents, U.S. planes bombed targets in an eastern district. Ahmed Ali, a doctor at Falluja hospital, said two women and a man were killed when bombs demolished their house. U.S. forces have mounted several air raids on Falluja this month, and say they are aiming to destroy foreign fighters loyal to al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In the mixed Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim town of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, six policemen were killed and five wounded when gunmen opened fire on them, police said. In the northern city of Mosul, gunmen shot dead a university lecturer as she drove to work, police and witnesses said. Police also fought a gunbattle with U.S. troops in the oil hub of Kirkuk, police Colonel Farhat Qader said. He said two policemen were badly wounded and six others arrested by U.S. troops. Britain's Ministry of Defense said a mortar attack on Camp Cherokee, a military base in the south of the city of Basra, late on Saturday caused no damage or casualties. A mortar attack in the town of Baiji, north of Baghdad, killed an Iraqi civilian and wounded a civilian and a policeman, the U.S. military said. Several people were also wounded in mortar attacks in Baghdad. |
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