The battle for Najaf

Last week, staff writer Scott Baldauf, an Iraqi interpreter, and freelance photographer Kael Alford traveled from Baghdad to the central Iraqi city of Najaf intending to write about growing tension between the Iraqi government and the Shiite militia (Mahdi Army) of Moqtada al-Sadr, an anti-American cleric. When they arrived fighting was already underway, and has continued for three days now. One American military spokesman called it the heaviest fighting since the fall of Saddam Hussein. To their surprise, they were the only Western journalists in the holy Shiite city.

What follows is Scott Baldauf's journal of events in Najaf from Thursday morning until Friday afternoon.

The city is largely abandoned when we arrive. Ad hoc barriers - a street light post, lines of rocks, trashcans - have been left in the road, directing us away from the center of the old city and from the police station, the two places we intend to visit first. On the horizon, we can see plumes of smoke. In our chests we can feel the thud and percussion of heavy weaponry. Our minds race in two opposite directions: safety on one hand, and journalistic curiosity on the other. Curiosity wins.

In a residential neighborhood in the center of Najaf, a man waves our car down and tells us we can't drive any farther. There is fighting just 200 meters ahead of us. He points at a group of shacks where fighters for the Mahdi Army are shooting at everything that moves. He invites us inside his house until it's safe to move.

The man's name is Amad Kamal. He and his four friends in the room with us are Shiite Muslims, and say they have no interest in the fighting. The fighting began around 12:30 a.m. Thursday, they say, starting with small-weapons fire, and then turned heavy around 4 a.m. The rest of the information we will have to gather on our own.

Overhead, we hear and see American helicopters, jet fighters, and unmanned drones crossing the sky. Hundreds of yards away, we can hear American mechanized patrols - Humvees and Bradley fighting machines and armored personnel carriers from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which had just arrived in Najaf about 10 days before, on July 31.

The fighting is close by, too close. Marine helicopters swoop low over this residential neighborhood repeatedly and fire heavy machine guns and even rockets into Mahdi Army positions.

By satellite phone, we get details from the US military. A US Marine spokeswoman says the fighting began at 1 a.m., when Mahdi Army fighters attacked the main police station. The police called for Iraqi Army support, and by 3 a.m., the US Marines were called in as well. The Marines' press release later says that the Marines did not fire a shot until later in the day, and the Iraqi forces were able to repel the Mahdi Army on their own. But residents say they could hear the difference in the kind of weapons used, much heavier and more powerful than the sort of Kalashnikovs that most Iraqi police or Iraqi Army soldiers carry.

While we stay put, the battle lines keep changing around us. At one point, a team of Mahdi Army fighters drives into our neighborhood, sets up a mortar, fires two rounds, and then puts the mortar tube back into the car, all in just under a minute. We take cover in the event that US Marines respond with precision radar that traces mortar and artillery trajectories back to their source. The Marine response, thankfully, never comes.

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