Shi'ites stage anti-US rallies

NAJAF, Iraq -- Thousands of Shi'ites stomped on American flags painted on roads outside mosques in a show of anger over the US presence in Iraq, while Sunni leaders called yesterday for a closure of places of worship to protest the sectarian violence that many fear may erupt into civil war.

Also, a US soldier was killed in a roadside bombing north of Baghdad, the military said.

In an effort to curb the daily violence, Prime Minister Ibrahim al- Jaafari said he will travel to Damascus to appeal in person for the government to take stronger steps to block insurgents from entering Iraq via Syria. Jaafari and American officials contend that many of the attacks are plotted by foreign fighters.

A picture of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein wearing only his underwear appeared on the front pages of the New York Post and Britain's The Sun. The papers said the pictures, taken in Hussein's Baghdad prison cell, were provided by an unidentified US military official. The military condemned the photos and launched an investigation into who took them.

Tensions spiraled throughout Iraq, particularly in its southern Shi'ite heartland, as more than 10,000 protesters heeded a call by radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to step on and drive over American and Israeli flags on roads outside mosques. Many of the worshipers were chanting or waving the Koran, Islam's holy book.

Sadr launched two uprisings against US forces in Baghdad and Najaf last year in April and August, then went into hiding before surfacing Monday to demand that US-led forces withdraw from Iraq.

Sadr made the appeal after US and Iraqi forces detained 13 Sadr supporters during a raid this week on a Shi'ite mosque in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad.

Crowds attended angry services in the Shi'ite-dominated cities of Najaf, Kufa, and Nasiriyah, where a gunfight erupted between Sadr supporters and guards protecting a local provincial governor's office.

Four police officers and four civilians were wounded, a hospital official said. Another nine Sadr supporters also were wounded, said Sheik al-Khafaji, an official at Sadr's Nasiriyah office.

''We warn the government not to fight the al-Sadr movement because all the tyrants of the world could not beat it," Hazim al-Araji, the imam of a Kufa mosque, said during yesterday's sermon. ''We say to the government: Do not be a tyrant like Saddam or [former interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad] Allawi."

About 5,000 other Sadr supporters marched in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, the scene of fierce fighting last year between US forces and fighters from his Mahdi Army militia

Sunni clerics, meanwhile, delivered fiery sermons in Baghdad and Ramadi, in western Iraq's volatile Sunni Triangle, where 3,000 worshipers prayed under a baking sun and heeded a call from three of Iraq's most influential Sunni organizations for places of worship to be shut for three days to protest alleged Shi'ite violence against them.

In Baghdad's Sunni Um al- Qura mosque, cleric Sheik Ahmed al-Samaraei accused the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi security forces of killing Sunni Muslims last week in the capital's eastern Shaab suburb.

''Blood of Muslims is cheap for them," Samaraei said. ''I demand the government investigates what happened or the matters will worsen."

Shi'ites make up 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people and were oppressed under Hussein, but emerged from January elections with the biggest voting bloc in parliament.

During a visit to Turkey, Jaafari said Iraq would not tolerate foreign fighters crossing the porous desert frontier separating his country from Syria.

''We will visit Syria sometime soon, and one of the issues that will be taken up will be the security file and the prevention of such infiltrations," he said.

His decision to go to Damascus follows US military assertions that top lieutenants of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, met in Syria last month to plot more suicide bombings in Iraq.

In Washington yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice broadened US accusations that Syria was contributing to the insurgencies in Iraq. After a meeting with Iraq's planning minister, Barham Salih, Rice again accused Syria of supporting terrorism. To that, she added an allegation that Syria may also be providing financial support for insurgents as well as ''allowing its territory to be used to organize terrorist attacks against innocent Iraqis."

In other developments yesterday:

A car bomb killed two Iraqi soldiers patrolling with US troops in Baghdad, the US military said. American helicopters were called in for support and fired on insurgents in the area. Police said four Iraqi soldiers were killed in what appeared to be the same attack.

A roadside bomb killed an Iraq civilian in Latifiyah, south of Baghdad, police said. More than 520 people have been killed in suicide bombings, assassinations, and other attacks since the April 28 announcement of Jaafari's Shi'ite-led government.