Sadr's militia still resisting despite claims of surrender

Shia insurgents loyal to the cleric Muqtada Sadr were still clearly in control of Najaf's holy sites last night despite an earlier claim by Iraq's interim ministry of the interior that Iraqi police had taken back the compound of the Imam Ali shrine.

In the surprise claim, which was denied by the US military and the Najaf police, a ministry spokesman had said earlier that 400 Sadr militiamen had been captured and the end to the fortnight-old battle for control of the city was in sight.

On a day when fighting between Sadr's Mehdi Army and US forces continued in and around the old city, reports from inside the compound failed to corroborate the claim after a night of heavy bombardment that officials at the health ministry indicated had cost more than 70 lives.

The number of "human shield" supporters inside the shrine and its courtyard appeared to be reduced, but hundreds remained and Mehdi Army fighters continued to patrol the streets leading to the shrine, repeatedly exchanging fire with American forces.

The interior ministry's claim followed confirmation by Sadr's forces that they intended to hand the keys of the shrine itself over to mainstream Shia clerics in the city.

Ahmed al-Shaibany, a close lieutenant of Sadr, said the group's leaders had told the clerics, who answer to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, that they would hand over the keys. While he indicated that militiamen and "human shields" now in the shrine would then leave, he gave no timetable for implementing such an agreement.

Mr Shaibany said: "We don't want to appease the government. We want to appease the Iraqi people."

Although by early evening there had been no repeat of the heavy air bombardment by US forces of positions in the city centre of the previous night, there was also no immediate sign of any breakthrough that would end the fighting.

The health ministry said 77 people had been killed and 71 injured during the past 24 hours. Most of the casualties were presumed to be from Thursday night's bombardment of Mehdi Army positions in the city, the most intense since fighting began a fortnight ago.

At Najaf's al-Hkeem hospital, a medic from Baghdad, who said he had volunteered to work there during the emergency but declined to give his name, said only five out of more than 70 people injured by the US bombardment of the city centre had been taken for treatment to the hospital.

All had lived on the outer edges of the attack area. The medic said it had been impossible to deliver many casualties from the old city.

One of the wounded, a man with head injuries, died after it was judged unsafe to transport him to hospital in Hillah, some 40 miles away, for neurosurgery. Most casualties in the hospital appeared to be civilians wounded during a week of attacks said to have been aimed at US forces by the Mehdi Army.

These included 35 Iraqi policemen injured in a mortar attack on the police headquarters on Thursday. They were taken for treatment to a nearby US base.

One man at al-Hkeem hospital, Amer Mohammed Abed, 46, who still had bloodstains on his chest, was being treated for shrapnel wounds to his stomach and arm. He said he had moved from his home because of repeated mortar attacks on the nearby police headquarters but had returned there yesterday morning when a mortar struck his street at about 10am.

He said: "We must work together and there must be a deal between the coalition forces and Sadr. I keep hearing that the government people are going to do something but nothing happens."

Another patient, aged 25, who suffered chest and leg injuries in a mortar attack on a house near his home on Tuesday, was more critical of the Mehdi Army.

The patient, who gave his name despite hospital officials present showing signs of nervousness, said: "I don't want to say anything about the Mehdi Army, but it is not the Americans who are attacking people's houses."

The patient said that he did not blame Sadr personally but said he thought some of his fighters were "Baathists who do not like Shia".