Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News

BAGHDAD, 7 March 2004 — Iraqi guerrillas and rebellious Shiites fought US-led forces on two fronts yesterday, mounting a string of battles across the south that killed at least 30 people and taking on US Marines in the turbulent city of Fallujah.

At least 18 American soldiers and more than 100 Iraqis have been killed in three days of clashes, the worst fighting in Iraq since the war that toppled Saddam Hussein. In the same period, a Salvadoran soldier and one from Ukraine also were killed.

The Marine assault on Fallujah aims to pacify a stronghold of the Sunni-led insurgency that has plagued US forces for months.

At the same time, US authorities have launched a crackdown on radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and his militia, sparking the first major armed confrontation between the Americans and Shiites since the US-led occupation began.

With fighting intensifying ahead of a June 30 deadline for handing over power to an Iraqi government, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that American commanders in Iraq will get additional troops if they request them. Commanders are studying ways to increase troops in Iraq should violence spread much more widely, a senior US military officer said.

In the latest US deaths, five Marines were killed Monday — one of them in the Fallujah fighting and the others on the western outskirts of Baghdad — and three US soldiers died in attacks in a Baghdad neighborhood on Monday and yesterday. At least 614 American troops have died in Iraq since the war began.

Marines fought their way into the center of Fallujah yesterday before withdrawing in the evening. For hours forces waged a fierce gunbattle with gunmen holed up in a residential neighborhood, and the military used an AC-130 gunship to barrage guerrillas. Commanders said Marines were holding an area several blocks deep into the city. At least two Marines were wounded.

The crackdown on Sadr — a 30-year-old cleric who has drawn young and impoverished Shiites to his side with angry sermons demanding the Americans out of the country — has sparked fighting in cities of the mainly Shiite south that usually do not see attacks on coalition forces.

Sadr’s black-garbed militiamen attacked coalition troops Monday and yesterday in the southern cities of Nassiriyah, Kut, Karbala and Amara and in northern Baghdad. There were 15 Iraqis killed in Nassiriyah and another 15 died in Amara, coalition military officials said.

Fearing a US move to arrest him, Sadr yesterday left the fortress-like mosque in the city of Kufa, south of Baghdad, where he had been holed up for days, his aides said. He said he was ready to die in his drive to oust the US-led occupation and urged his followers to resist foreign forces.

“America has shown its evil intentions, and the proud Iraqi people cannot accept it. They must defend their rights by any means they see fit,” Sadr said in a statement released by his office. “I’m prepared to have my own blood shed for what is holy to me,” he said.

Sadr moved to his main office, located in the nearby city of Najaf, according to a top aide, Sheikh Qays Al-Khazali. Hundreds of militiamen were protecting the office yesterday, though there was no independent confirmation Sadr was inside.

In Nassiriyah, 15 Iraqis were killed and 35 wounded in clashes between militiamen and Italian troops. Eleven Italians troops were slightly wounded.

— Additional input from agencies