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41 Sadr fighters killed near Najaf

* US tanks destroy Sadr’s office in Karbala
* Four Pakistani pilgrims dead
* 5 Iraqis, 1 US soldier killed in suicide bombing
* 2 US soldiers killed in Baghdad
* US names new governor for Najaf

NAJAF: US troops killed 41 members of Moqtada Sadr’s militia in a firefight east of Najaf on Thursday and recaptured the governor’s office in the city, a senior coalition military official said.

“We have resecured the governor’s building and we intend to have the governor reoccupy it to have the coalition retake control of the city,” the official said of the office on the edge of the Iraqi city, which is holy to Shia Muslims.

The recapture of the building was largely unopposed, he said.

US forces also pushed to the east of Najaf, across the Euphrates River, resulting in heavy clashes with Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia in which 41 fighters were killed, the official said. He gave no details of US casualties there.

US tanks rolled into the Iraqi Shia holy city of Karbala on Thursday and took up positions close to the main shrines after destroying the offices of Sadr with heavy machinegun fire, witnesses said. About eight heavy armoured vehicles and six lighter vehicles were positioned in the city centre, about 500 metres from the Imam Hussain and Imam Abbas shrines.

A witness told Associated Press Television News that troops fired on the insurgents and ended up destroying four buses from Pakistani pilgrims, which could be seen burning, sending a plume of black smoke over the city. The witness said: “Three or four” Pakistani pilgrims had been killed.

A suicide car bomber in Baghdad killed five Iraqis and a US soldier outside the US headquarters in an attack apparently claimed by a Muslim militant with ties to Al Qaeda.

US officials said the checkpoint bombing bore the hallmarks of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an ally of Osama Bin Laden.

Another group, the hitherto unheard-of Islamic Rage Squadrons, released a video on Arab television showing what it said was a blindfolded American civilian held hostage in Iraq. Al Arabiya television said he appeared to be an Iraqi-born engineer. He gave his name as Aban Elias from Denver, Colorado.

Thursday’s bomb wounded 23 Iraqis, including three policemen, and two US soldiers at an entrance to the sprawling Green Zone.

Two US soldiers were killed and two others were wounded in a roadside bomb attack in the Iraqi capital, the military said on Thursday.

The casualties were inflicted in “an improvised explosive device attack here just before midnight May 5”, it said in a statement, without giving further details.

Ten militants were killed overnight during four separate operations in Baghdad’s slum district of Sadr city, a senior military official said on Thursday. One US soldier was also wounded during the clashes in an area where the Mehdi Army of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr and where he has some of his strongest support.

“We will continue to hunt down Sadr’s militia as intelligence comes in. We go where the intelligence takes us,” said the official.

A member of Sadr’s militia was also killed in clashes late on Wednesday with Polish forces in Karbala, the officials and militiamen said.

US overseer for Iraq Paul Bremer on Thursday named Adnan al-Zorfi as the new provincial governor for Najaf and called on the militiamen of Moqtada Sadr occupying the city to lay down their arms. —Agencies

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