Independent: US Begins Massive Bombing Of Najaf
American warplanes began bombarding insurgent positions in Najaf last night and troops used loudspeakers to urge civilians to leave the area after the sixth successive day of fighting between US Marines and Shia gunmen.
The battle for control of the holy Shia city intensified after helicopter gunships, artillery and tanks were used to try to clear the city's hallowed cemetery - the graveyard is a hideout of militiamen led by the cleric Muqtada Sadr.
In Najaf, now the focal point of the 15-month insurgency against the presence of US, British and other foreign forces in Iraq, witnesses reported plumes of smoke rising above the cemetery and said that Sadr's Mehdi Army had attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint in the city, killing and wounding several uniformed men.
A Sadr aide, Qais al-Khazali, declared: "What is going on in Najaf and elsewhere is mass killing by the Americans and the so-called interim government."
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