Shiites warn US troops to leave Najaf

After supporters of the Shiite preacher, Moqtada al-Sadr, warned of a popular uprising in Najaf if the US failed to pull out within three days, Lt- Col Conlin said the scale of Mr al-Sadr’s following in Najaf was exaggerated. He was only worried about the threats, he said, "because al-Sadr’s people are a bunch of riffraff".

The violence aimed at US forces continued yesterday as two soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were killed in an ambush in northern Iraq.

Their convoy came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades and small arms in a Sunni tribal area.

The men’s deaths take to 37 the number of Americans killed in combat in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad marked the end of major fighting.

Another US soldier was killed and two others injured when their vehicle crashed and flipped over near Baghdad airport.

An Iraqi driver for the United Nations was also killed when his vehicle crashed into a bus after being hit by gunfire south of Baghdad. The attack on the two-car convoy was the first time UN vehicles had been fired on since the war.

The US civilian administrator in Iraq said yesterday that he believed Saddam Hussein was still in the country, probably in the area where attacks were being organised by a small band of "professional killers".

The attacks were taking place in "only a very small part of the country", Paul Bremer insisted, led by a "small group of bitter-enders" from Saddam’s regime. "They pose no strategic threat to us. We will overpower them," he added.

Iraq’s Shiite majority have 13 out of 25 seats on the new US-backed governing council whose members were appointed by Mr Bremer. It offers, for the first time in recent history, the prospect of political clout to match the Shiite population in a country historically dominated by the minority

But Mr al-Sadr in a sermon at Friday prayers condemned the council. "An Islamic army must be created and volunteers for this great army must come forward," he said.

Yesterday the protesters handed US forces a list of demands after two hours of demonstrations.

"If they don’t leave, they will face a popular uprising," said Sayed Razak al-Moussawi, one of Mr al-Sadr’s aides.

Mr al-Sadr, thought to be 30 years old, is not considered a high-ranking Shiite cleric, though he is said to have a considerable following among badly off Shiites.

His stature comes from being the son of Imam Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a top Shiite religious leader who was assassinated by Saddam’s agents in 1999. The demonstrators marched from the Imam Ali shrine, six miles to administration headquarters in Najaf. Some had been bussed in from the poor Shiite quarter of Baghdad, the former Saddam City - now renamed Sadr City.

"Long live al-Sadr. America and the council are infidels," they chanted. "Muqtada, go ahead. We are your soldiers of liberation."

The demonstrations brought a reminder of the killings of six British military policemen, also in a town in the mostly Shiite south, after a protest over searches of people’s homes turned violent.

In heated negotiations, nose-to-nose with one of Mr al-Sadr’s aides, Lt-Col Conlin denied reports his men had surrounded Mr al-Sadr’s house on Saturday and warned they would respond if threatened.

"Mr al-Sadr is a young, immature man, who is rapidly losing support in the city," the US commander said later. "[Mr al-Sadr] wants to import violence into this most peaceful city. But the people of Najaf do not want him."

The Shiites welcomed Saddam’s overthrow and in Shiite-dominated Basra, British forces have seldom been attacked since the war’s end.

But Sunni Muslims there have issued their own calls for demonstrations.