300 gunmen killed as battle rages near Najaf

Najaf, Iraq: US and Iraqi forces killed more than 300 gunmen in a day-long battle involving US tanks and aircraft near the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Iraqi police, army and political sources said.

The US military said on Monday it was an ongoing operation so it could not provide any details.

An Iraqi army source said US forces took control of the operation on Sunday and bombing continued in the area until well after dawn on Monday, which was the climax of Ashura, the highpoint of the Shiite religious calendar.

Two Americans were killed, the US military said on Sunday, when an attack helicopter went down during the battle. Iraqi officials said the helicopter seemed to have been shot down.

Police Colonel Ali Nomas said 300 to 350 gunmen had been killed in the operation and dozens more arrested. Three Iraqi soldiers were killed and six more missing, and five policemen were killed. Another 40 Iraqi police and soldiers were wounded.

According to one Iraqi political source, hundreds of fighters, drawn from both Sunni and Shiite communities, fought throughout Sunday and late into the night.

A reporter at the scene, 160 km south of Baghdad, saw US tanks and heard blasts after dark on Sunday and an Iraqi officer said F-16 jets were bombing the area.

An Iraqi army source said some of the dead wore headbands declaring themselves to be a "Soldier of Heaven".

Political sources said the gunmen appeared to be both Sunni Arabs and Shiites loyal to Ahmad Hassani Al Yemeni.

The governor of Najaf province, Assad Abu Gilel, told reporters the authorities had uncovered a plot by the gunmen to kill some of the clerics today, to coincide with the climax of Ashura.

"There is a conspiracy to kill the clergy on the 10th day of Muharram," Abu Gilel said.

A US helicopter was also shot down in the fighting near Najaf, security sources said. A reporter said while US helicopters were firing rockets at groves sheltering militants, he saw smoke trailing from one helicopter before it came down.

In other violence, at least 61 people were killed and scores wounded while police found 54 more corpses of people killed in brutal sectarian attacks in violence-wracked Baghdad.

Iraqi security officials also reported that insurgents fired mortars into a girls school in Baghdad that injured four pupils.

In Kirkuk meanwhile, two car bombings killed 16 people and wounded 30, police chief Major General Torhan Yousuf told reporters.

Casualties were also reported from south of Baghdad in the Babil province where several mortar rounds killed another 10 people, a police officer said.

Anti-war protests

Roadside bombings killed seven more US soldiers across Iraq on Saturday as US protesters told Con-gress to cut funds for a new Baghdad security plan.

Yesterday, the military announced the deaths of three more US troops, raising its losses to 78 for January.

In Washington, Vietnam War protest icon Jane Fonda was among the protesters.

"I haven't spoken at an anti-war rally for 34 years," said Fonda, whose visit to Hanoi in 1972 outraged many compatriots and damaged her career as an actress. "But silence is no longer an option," she told a cheering crowd.

The White House remained defiant however, with spokesman Gordon Johndroe saying Bush "understands that Americans want to see a conclusion to the war and the new strategy is designed to do just that."