Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News

BAGHDAD, 10 May 2004 — At least 34 Iraqis were killed as US forces stepped up pressure on gunmen loyal to cleric Moqtada Sadr, pushing with tanks into Kufa and assaulting militia positions in the narrow streets of a Shiite enclave in Baghdad.

The heaviest fighting in Baghdad came when fighters from Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia attacked police stations and set up checkpoints in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, a heavily populated district in the eastern part of the capital, US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said.

US troops moved in and secured two police stations in fighting that killed 18 militiamen, Kimmitt said.

Earlier, an explosion tore apart shops in a market in the western Biyaa district. The blast went off when police tried to dismantle two bombs found in vendors’ stalls, witnesses said. Four people were killed and 17 were wounded, according to the Health Ministry. Kimmitt said three people were killed.

“Is this the freedom that they want? People cut into pieces?” one man at the market, Fadhil Farid, cried. “What did we do wrong?”

At about the same time, gunmen opened fire on a US patrol in western Baghdad, sparking a firefight that killed three Iraqi police, two civilians and one of the attackers, Kimmitt said. Fighters attacked another patrol in the center of the capital, wounding two Iraqi policemen.

The US foray into Kufa was the deepest move yet into the city, a Mehdi Army stronghold. Several tanks pushed as close as 500 meters from Kufa’s main mosque, trading fire with militiamen who fired at them from both sides of the main road, witnesses said. Tanks also moved into neighborhood on the other side of Kufa, trading fire with fighters.

Two civilians were killed and 10 others wounded — including two children — in the battles, said hospital officials. Three houses were destroyed. The tanks pulled out of the city in the afternoon.

“It was the first time the Americans came this far,” said Odai Abdulkarim, 24, a mechanic who has a shop off the highway leading to the Kufa mosque, where Sadr regularly leads Friday prayers. “We are afraid for our families, afraid the rockets would hit our house,” he said.