Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News

WASHINGTON / BAGHDAD, 8 May 2004 — US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday extended “my deepest apology” to Iraqis brutally abused in US military prisons and said he favors compensating them for their suffering. “These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them. I take full responsibility,” Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

At the same time, he brushed aside Democratic demands for his resignation. Asked whether he could remain effective in his post, he said if he believed he could not, “I’d resign in a minute.” “I would not resign simply because people try to make a political issue out of it.”

Meanwhile, a defiant Moqtada Sadr delivered Friday sermon at a Kufa mosque, denouncing US abuse of Iraqi prisoners while gunmen loyal to the Shiite cleric clashed with US troops in two cities in fighting that killed at least 23 Iraqis, including six members of a single family.

The scandal over prisoner mistreatment spilled over into the confrontation between US troops and Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, as a sheikh loyal to the cleric offered rewards for the capture of coalition troops and told worshipers that anyone who captures a female British soldier can keep her as a slave.

US officials have expressed fears that Iraqi outrage over widely published photos of Iraqis being stripped and humiliated by their guards at Abu Gharib could fuel attacks on American soldiers.

Two journalists from state-run Polish television — a Pole and a dual Algerian-Polish national — were killed and a Polish cameraman was wounded in the arm as they drove from Baghdad to Najaf when gunmen in another vehicle sprayed their car with gunfire.

US troops clashed with Mahdi Army forces in Najaf and Karbala, 80 kilometers to the north. Exchanges of fire were heard in several neighborhoods of Karbala throughout the day and into the evening. Around the time of noon prayers, heavy fire and explosions went off at the Sadr headquarters, about 500 meters from the city center.

Coalition planes dropped leaflets over the city, calling on residents to evacuate the Jamiya neighborhood — scene of continued fighting yesterday — so troops could clear it of militiamen. Two militiamen and two civilians slain in the fighting were brought to Karbala’s main hospital, and at least 14 people were wounded.

In Najaf, clashes killed at least 12 Sadr gunmen, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad. Overnight, militiamen fired a number of volleys of mortar shells at the US base in Najaf and the governor’s building — wrested from Sadr fighters the day before.

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