Sadr renews call for fight against US

BAGHDAD -- Rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared a ''revolution" against US-led security forces in Iraq yesterday after a fragile monthlong truce unraveled, leading to clashes in the holy city of Najaf and other Shi'ite areas that killed at least 20 Iraqis and a US soldier and brought down a US helicopter.

Sadr's call for an uprising is his first significant test of Iraq's new interim government since it took office June 28 and signals the end to the delicate peace that had settled over Iraq's long-oppressed Shi'ite majority in the south.

Sadr's militia, called the Mahdi Army, waged gun battles with US Marines and Iraqi security forces from dusk to dawn in Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad. They scrambled up and down its dusty side streets and opened up barrages of machine-gun fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars on Humvees and helicopters.

The militia claimed control of four southern communities, including Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, where fighting also erupted yesterday. Iraqi officials denied the claim, and there was no independent confirmation.

''This is a revolution against the occupation force until we get independence and democracy," Sadr's spokesman, Ahmed Shaybani, said in a telephone interview.

But after nightfall yesterday, Sadr's side said it wanted to restore the truce. If US forces do not agree, ''then the firing and igniting of the revolution will continue," Shaybani said.

The US military and Iraqi police said the fighting began when suspected members of the Mahdi Army attacked a police station overnight in Najaf.

''If they want it to be war, let it be," said Ghalib Hashim Jazaeri, Najaf's police chief. ''We have enough men and equipment to defeat them."

Each side blamed the other for breaking a truce negotiated at the end of June after a two-month uprising in April and May that left hundreds dead.

Mahdi Army fighters could be seen in the streets of Najaf setting off grenades and creating roadblocks with mortar tubes and tires.

Shaybani denied that the Sadr followers had started the fight. He accused the Iraqi police, National Guard and US forces of conspiring to break the truce, which restricted US coalition forces from entering parts of the city, including near the sacred sites.

Shaybani said the coalition forces surrounded the city around 2 p.m. yesterday. ''We knew they wanted to invade it," he said. ''We had and have to defend the holy city. We didn't want to violate the truce, and we are still committed to it. But they don't respect the word they gave. They want it to be war."

One US soldier was killed and five were wounded in the Najaf fighting. As a large plume of black smoke rose from the city, a black US helicopter tilted to the side and chugged slowly to the ground at an angle before it hit with a loud boom. The military said two wounded crew members were evacuated.

The Najaf violence killed seven militants and wounded 34 others, who have been detained, the US military said. Nine civilians were also killed and 34 injured, including four policemen, said Hussein Hadi, an official at al-Hakeem hospital in Najaf.

Gun battles also broke out between militants and US forces in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, killing two people and injuring two others, Health Ministry officials said. Seven US soldiers were wounded, said Major Philip Smith, a spokesman for the First Cavalry Division.

In the southern city of Basra, two militants were killed in clashes with British forces yesterday, the British military said. The Mahdi Army had threatened to attack British forces in Basra if they did not release four detained militants.

In Amarah, also to the south of the capital, an appeal for Mahdi Army members to mobilize rang out through mosque loudspeakers. Militants took to the streets, shooting at government buildings and launching mortars at British troops and a British base, said Major Ian Clooney, a British military spokesman. There were no British casualties and no reports of Iraqi casualties, he said.

Iraqi interior minister Falah Naqib pledged to find Sadr and arrest him: ''We will not negotiate."

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.