U.S. tanks take up positions near holy shrine in Najaf

NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - U.S. tanks rolled into the Old City of Najaf toward a holy Shiite shrine where militants were hiding Monday as participants at a national conference voted to send a delegation here to try to negotiate an end to the fighting.

The city, which had been quiet early Monday, was hit by series of explosions in the late morning that shook the vast cemetery, the scene of many battles between U.S. forces and militants. Witnesses also reported U.S. tanks had moved to within 500 yards of the revered Imam Ali Shrine.

"We are proceeding with our operations. We are moving forward and we captured some positions inside the Old City from the south during the night and this morning," Police Chief Brig. Ghalib al-Jazaari said.

Fighting resumed Sunday after negotiations and a cease-fire collapsed. Two U.S. soldiers were killed in Najaf fighting Sunday, and a Marine was killed in Iraq's western, largely Sunni province of Anbar. At least 934 U.S. servicemembers have been killed in Iraq since March 2003.

Also Monday, officials reported that a French-American journalist and his Iraqi translator have disappeared in the southern city of Nasiriyah.

The journalist, Micah Garen, and his translator Amir Doushi went missing while walking through a busy market in the city, said Adnan al-Shoraify, deputy governor of Dhi Qar province. He said the translator's family had first reported the two missing.

The Arab television station Al-Jazeera said the journalist had been kidnapped and provided no other details. Al-Shoraify could not confirm whether Garen, 33, was abducted.

In Baghdad, attackers ambushed a U.S. tank in the city's troubled Sadr City neighborhood - another al-Sadr stronghold - leaving the tank in flames. Maj. Philip Smith, deputy spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division, said insurgents disabled the tank with a rocket-propelled grenade or roadside bomb. He said the crew escaped with minor injuries.

The fighting in Najaf has cast a pall over the National Conference in Baghdad, an unprecedented gathering of 1,300 religious, tribal and political leaders from across Iraq meant to be a key first step toward democracy.

Some of the delegates threatened to walk out unless the crisis was resolved. On Monday, the conference voted to send a delegation to Najaf to ask radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to tell his followers to drop their weapons and join the country's political process.

"The door is very open to all Iraqis, regardless of their religion, ethnic background, to join the free political process," Shiite cleric Hussein al-Sadr, a distant relative of Muqtada al-Sadr, told the conference.

Muqtada al-Sadr's aides said they supported efforts to end the violence.

"We are ready to accept any mediation for a peaceful solution," al-Sadr aide Ahmed al-Shaibany said.

At the same time, however, al-Shaibany called on tribal chiefs throughout Iraq to travel to Najaf to form human shields to protect al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militant and the Imam Ali Shrine.

Fighting on Sunday apparently caused minor damage to the outer wall of the shrine compound, ripping off some tiles and leaving some holes.

With Sunday's deaths, at least eight U.S. troops have been killed in Najaf, along with about 20 Iraqi officers, since fighting there began Aug. 5. The U.S. military estimates hundreds of insurgents have been killed, but the militants dispute the figure.

U.S. troops have taken the lead in fighting the militiamen in Najaf, while Iraqi security forces have played a minor role, mainly by manning checkpoints. U.S. troops are training Iraqi national guard units in the town for any possible raid on the shrine compound, where militants are holed up with arms.

In other violence, two civilians were killed and four others injured in the city of Baqouba on Monday when a mortar hit their house, said Ali Hussein, a medic at the main hospital in Baqouba.

It was not known who fired the mortar, but insurgents frequently clash with U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces in the city, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

A roadside bomb in Baqouba also wounded three members of the Iraqi National Guard, said Zuhair Abdul-Kareem, one of the injured guardsmen.

In the volatile Sunni city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, U.S. warplanes bombed three neighborhoods Sunday afternoon, killing five civilians and wounding six others, said, Dr. Adil Khamis, of Fallujah General Hospital.

The three-day conference, which started Sunday, aims to give a broad spectrum of Iraqis a voice in the political process and increase the legitimacy of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's interim government, which is deeply dependent on American troops and money even after the end of the U.S. occupation.

Just hours after the heavily guarded meeting began, however, insurgents fired a mortar barrage that landed at a nearby commuter bus station, killing two people and wounding 17 others, according to the Health Ministry.

The mortars apparently were aimed at the fortified Green Zone enclave where the conference was taking place, police said.

The continued Najaf fighting has undermined Allawi's attempts to show he is in control. The country's Shiite majority has been angered by the sight of U.S. troops firing around some of their holiest sites - and many have blamed the Iraqi government.

Some conference delegates have staged loud protests and others have threatened to pull out if the violence does not end.

In an attempt to assuage the complaints, a working committee was formed to find a peaceful solution to the tension in Najaf.

Cabinet minister Waeil Abdel-Latif warned of a new major offensive in Najaf unless the militants drop their weapons, get out of the city and transform themselves into a political party.

"We shall give the peaceful way a chance ... and after that, we shall take another position," he said Sunday.

He also said foreign fighters were among the militants captured in Najaf - a repeated government claim - and he played a video that showed interviews with Iranian, Egyptian and Jordanian fighters and boxes of weapons, reportedly from Iran.

Al-Sadr, a fiery young cleric, has drawn support among some with his denunciations of the continued U.S. domination of the country. He has depicted the fight by his followers as a campaign against occupation.