IRAQ: RESISTANCE

KR: Offensive resumes in Najaf, prompting desertions of Iraqi troops

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a renewed assault Sunday on Shiite Muslim militiamen in the southern holy city of Najaf in a risky campaign that was marred from the onset by an outcry from Iraqi politicians and the desertion of dozens of Iraqi troops who refused to fight their countrymen.


The latest siege began Sunday afternoon, a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's administration announced that fighting would resume after negotiations between government officials and aides to Muqtada al-Sadr failed to end the militant cleric's 10-day rebellion. The failed cease-fire talks, desertions and renewed fighting further undermined Allawi's leadership just as Iraq was poised to take its first step toward free elections by picking a national assembly.

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Democracy was a long way from Najaf yesterday. As fighting resumed in the Shia holy city, Iyad Allawi's government moved to impose an authoritarian media clampdown before any full-scale assault on the holy sites which insurgents have made their base.

Despite indications that any full-scale assault in the city might await completion of the conference in Baghdad, most Arab television crews and other reporters left the city last night after armed police came to the Bar Najaf hotel, where nearly all foreign and Arab journalists are staying, to order them to leave for Baghdad. Journalists who protested were told: "You have been warned. You have two hours. If you don't leave you will be shot." "Rember Jenin?"

During the day two bullets were fired at the gate to the hotel entrance and through the open doorway of the hotel. The second bullet hit a glass panel inside the hotel, which slightly injured an Arab journalist when it fractured. Although there was no confirmation that the bullets had been fired by police, the hotel is only a few hundred metres from the local police station and much farther from the main positions of Sadr's insurgents.

The attempted media ban ­ reminiscent in its own way of the Saddam Hussein regime toppled 15 months ago ­ is in contrast to the media savvy of Sadr spokesmen who have welcomed reporters to the Imam Ali shrine and made visits to the Bar Najaf hotel to give press conferences.