The battle for Najaf
A first-hand account by the only Western reporter in Najaf as major fighting broke out late last week.
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Nearby, a well-dressed Iraqi man is being led away by three gunmen. He might be an informant. He might be a hostage. Mahdi Army fighters are running out of money. Locals say they are turning into thieves.
In Baghdad, US military spokesmen claim to have killed 300 fighters over the past two days of fighting. We've seen hundreds more still in action, and there are possibly thousands left in the shrine area and the cemetery. Getting rid of them all, finishing them off, and restoring full government control, as the Governor of Najaf is now calling for this week, could result in bloody street fighting, with hundreds of civilian casualties.
Already in the Old City, shrapnel and bullets from helicopter gunships have torn holes in concrete walls. Civilians show us holes in their walls, and the bullets and shrapnel fragments they have found on the floor. Some of their relatives are now being rushed to hospital. Others have treated themselves. One man is bleeding through his dishdasha. An improperly applied bandage is not stopping the blood. He ignores our offer to take him to a hospital. He must check on his mother, whose house is nearby.
Friday, 1 p.m.
At Al Hakeem hospital, a wounded Iraqi woman is being delicately removed from the back seat of a private car-turned ambulance by relatives. Doctors examine her injuries and say they can do nothing for her. The only place left to go is the city's best hospital, which has been taken over as a coalition military base, off limits to civilians. The relatives start beating their chests and wailing. There is not enough time to make it there.
There are conflicting numbers of casualties: Official hospital records say 11 have died as of Friday. A doctor, Ehsan Al Kuzaze, says the number is closer to 50 dead, and 20 injured. The numbers are certain to rise, he says, as the fighting eases, and as civilians are able to take their wounded to hospital.
As Dr. Kuzaze escorts a photographer back into the hospital to see more wounded, leaving an armed policeman to protect us in the lobby, another family walks out to the parking lot sobbing and slapping their foreheads in grief.
Friday, 2 p.m.
Our Iraqi interpreter is growing increasingly concerned for our safety. He tells us it's time to get going. And he reminds us that it's dangerous to wait much longer because there is one Sunni city on the road back to Baghdad that's notorious for kidnapping foreigners. We need to be past there by nightfall.
From Najaf, the road directly back to Baghdad is blocked. We take an alternate route through the central Iraqi city of Kufa, another Sadr bastion. There, an Iraqi police checkpoint that had been manned just the day before is abandoned. At the Kufa mosque - where Moqtada al-Sadr's speech that day will call on Muslims to fight against the Americans, "our enemies" - there are only Mahdi Army fighters, within full sight of the main road. It will be another 25 miles before we see another checkpoint manned by Iraqi police or US military.
Friday 4 p.m.
A US marine at a checkpoint stops our vehicle for a chat. "Do any of you speak English?" he asks. We tell him we're heading back to Baghdad. He asks our interpreter and driver what they do, and lets us go. Behind us, a traffic jam has developed for nearly a half mile, and two lanes of highway fatten up into eight lanes of impatient traffic.
A half hour later we reach our hotel in Baghdad. We learn that since Thursday, fighting has also broken out in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, as well as in Basra, Nasiriyah, Amara, and other Shiite cities and towns. The Mahdi Army fighters say the uprising is just beginning.
