The Battle for Fallujah Intesifies; U.S. Poised to Attack Najaf

The daily carnage in Iraq continued yesterday with renewed fighting in cities and towns across the country. Eight Iraqis and one U.S. soldier were killed in clashes in Fallujah. The marines called in air strikes, destroying a minaret that Iraqi guerillas had reportedly been firing from. U.S. forces say they are going to begin patrolling the hostile town with Iraqi forces but have delayed doing so until Thursday.
Renewed fighting also erupted around Najaf and Kufa, with the US determined to move into some new positions in Najaf. Militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr attacked U.S. forces who were replacing Spanish troops at a fort on the outskirts of town. U.S. gunships responded, killing 43 Iraqis.

Chief US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has ordered Sadr to withdraw his militia and its weapons from mosques and schools in Najaf. Sadr has threatened to unleash suicide bombers against American forces if they enter the holy city. In an interview with the Italian paper "La Repubblica" Monday, Sadr predicted that if the US arrests or kills him, the Iraqi people will unleash on them the fires of hell.

Meanwhile, two U.S. troops were killed and five wounded in Baghdad when a house blew up as they were trying to inspect it for chemical weapons. After the blast, Baghdad residents celebrated on top of burnt Humvees.

The Washington Post reports an alarming increase in the number of U.S. soldiers wounded this month. Doctors say they are performing one craniotomy per day, where they remove the skull to get at injured brain tissue. One surgeon told the Post: "We've done more in eight weeks than the previous neurosurgery team did in eight months".

Finally, Iraq's U.S.-selected leaders approved a new flag for the country, dumping Saddam Hussein's red-and-black standard. The new design is white with two blue stripes, and although it has a crescent representing Islam, the flag no longer bears the words "God is great."

The new design not only abandons the symbols of Saddam's regime. It also avoids the colors used in other Arab flags: green and black for Islam and red for Arab nationalism. The Associated Press notes that the only country in the Middle East with blue stripes in its flag is Israel, which has a Star of David on a field of white between horizontal blue bands.


Peter Lumsbaine, head of The Najaf Emergency Peace Team, a handful of peace activists who have arrived in Najaf. They plan to act as human shields if US troops goes into the holy city to crush Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Rahul Mahajan, is an independent journalist and author. He has just come out of Iraq, where he spent nearly a month reporting from the ground. He was one of the only unembedded journalists to make it into Fallujah. He runs a blog called empirenotes.org.

Listen To Audio:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/27/1434254