You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

3,000 U.S. Soldiers Mass Outside Holy City of Najaf

HeadlineApr 13, 2004

Up to 3,000 U.S. soldiers are now massed outside the Shiite’s holiest city in Iraq, Najaf, where the Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr has been holed up. On Monday Sadr pulled back his militia from controlling government buildings in Najaf, Karbala and Kufa. A U.S. commander said “My intent is to destroy Sadr’s militia, absolutely destroy it. And then to capture or kill Sadr. That is our mission. We’re just waiting to be unleashed.” A U.S. attack on the holy city of Najaf could inflame anti-U.S. sentiment among the Shiite community. The Iranian newspaper Baztab is reporting that the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has warned the occupying forces not to attack the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Sistani, who is the most influential Shiite in Iraq, said if such an attack occurred the religious leadership of the Shiites would fight to its last breath. In Baghdad earlier today US troops arrested a representative of Sadr in a central Baghdad hotel.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top