By Karl Vick and Saad Sarhan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 5, 2004; Page A01

KUFA, Iraq, April 4 -- An armed Shiite revolt against the U.S.-led occupation erupted Sunday in Baghdad and other cities across Iraq's normally quiescent south. Nine soldiers, eight of them Americans, were killed, and three dozen were wounded, U.S. officials said.

The day's events constituted the most serious challenge yet to the U.S.-led occupation by an element of the country's majority Shiite population, which for most of a year has observed a broad tolerance of the United States and its allies.

The fighting pitted forces led by the United States, Britain and Spain against the Mahdi Army, a militia controlled by Moqtada Sadr, a junior cleric whose following is concentrated among the urban poor. At least 20 Iraqi demonstrators were also killed.

On the decrepit eastern side of Baghdad in Sadr City, a sprawling slum named for Sadr's father, protesters attempted to overrun police stations and other government buildings.

Militiamen fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault weapons at members of the 1st Armored Division, the U.S. military said. News photos showed militiamen and children cavorting near two Humvees in flames. Tracer fire was visible in the night sky from downtown, and residents reported loud explosions in the neighborhood after dark.

The militias were believed to have abandoned the police stations during the night after U.S. troops cordoned off the slum, home to an estimated 2 million people. Television footage broadcast from Sadr City hospitals showed bloodied young men being wheeled into emergency rooms on gurneys and in wheelchairs.

The Army's 1st Armored Division issued a statement saying the Mahdi Army had "attempted to interfere with security in Baghdad, intimidate Iraqi citizens and place them in danger. . . . Coalition forces and Iraqi security forces prevented this effort and reestablished security in Baghdad at the cost of seven U.S. soldiers killed and more than two dozen wounded."

Before the death toll from the violence in Baghdad was announced after midnight, the day's most dramatic conflict had taken place in Kufa, near the Shiite holy city of Najaf. A lengthy firefight erupted in the city between Salvadoran troops and a crowd of thousands of Sadr followers. The clash occurred less than a mile from the mosque where two days earlier, Sadr, who has been at odds with occupation authorities for months, for the first time urged his followers to strike occupation forces "where you meet them."

Sadr issued new instructions after the firefight in Kufa, which continued for hours and eventually drew in Apache attack helicopters and U.S. warplanes. The statement advised followers to give up on demonstrations and "resort to other things." The Arabic instruction that followed could be interpreted as "intimidate your enemies" or "terrorize your enemies."

A Sadr spokesman said about 30 demonstrators were killed in Kufa. The Reuters news agency quoted a health official, however, as saying the death toll was 20. Protesters said the day began with a peaceful demonstration against the arrest of a Sadr aide on Saturday on charges of conspiring in the year-old killing of a senior Shiite cleric friendly to the United States.

Military officials said one U.S. soldier and one Salvadoran soldier were killed in Kufa and that 12 soldiers were wounded. Witnesses said they saw militiamen capture a Salvadoran soldier and execute him by forcing a live grenade into his mouth.

Fighting also erupted in the southeastern city of Amarah, where British troops said they returned fire during a protest, according to a military spokeswoman in London. News reports said one Iraqi was killed and five wounded.

In Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, demonstrators took control of three bridges over the Euphrates River. The episode ended without violence after negotiations among Sadr officials, the Italian troops who control the city and the local office of the Coalition Provisional Authority, said Tobin Bradley, the CPA political adviser in the city.

Sadr officials were meeting in Basra, the country's second-largest city, where residents said tensions were also rising.

The violence appeared to open a fresh front in resistance to the year-old occupation, during which more U.S. soldiers have been killed than in the war that overthrew the government of President Saddam Hussein. Attacks on U.S.-led forces had been focused in the so-called Sunni Triangle west and north of Baghdad, where residents with ties to the former government mounted hit-and-run attacks on U.S. patrols. Waves of terrorist bombings have also targeted Westerners and Iraqis who have worked with the occupation.

Sadr loomed as an additional threat, having organized and armed a militia in the months since the war. But except for a firefight in October in Sadr City's central square -- an encounter U.S. commanders termed an ambush -- the Mahdi Army had not raised arms against occupation forces.

The posture changed over the weekend, however, with Sadr's call for attacks on forces he said were trying to impose their will on Iraq.

"The Sayyid Moqtada Sadr did not call for resistance directly, but the demands of the Iraqi people are not being met," said Abu Haider Ghalib Garawi, a Sadr official introduced as a leader of the Mahdi Army.

"But there's no more patience. We can't guarantee the behavior of the wise people and the ordinary people."

Garawi spoke under the swaying lanterns of the main Kufa mosque, where militiamen cradling AK-47s squatted on thin woven mats and a plainclothes policeman strode about smiling, an American-issued Glock 9mm pistol on his hip. Much of Kufa's American-trained police force joined the side of the Sadr forces when the firefight started in late morning. By 2 p.m., the police checkpoint at the edge of town was manned by militiamen. White-shirted traffic police remained on duty but said the Mahdi Army was in charge.

A half-hour later, the checkpoint was abandoned and the Sadr followers -- most of them unarmed -- boarded buses to return to Baghdad, where most had traveled from the previous night. "Moqtada has ordered us to withdraw," said one, carrying an AK-47.

The order suggested that the day's events may have been intended not as a declaration of war on the occupation so much as a taste of what Sadr's organization might unleash if senior occupation officials persist in their efforts to neutralize the junior cleric.

Senior Sadr officials in Kufa said the next demonstration of power would be a general strike.

Immediately after the Kufa firefight, Sadr representatives arrived to consult with officials from the Badr Organization, the militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and a delegation from the Dawa party, the two most prominent Shiite parties represented on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council.

But armed men from Fallujah and Baqubah -- centers of resistance in the Sunni heartland west and north of Baghdad -- also appeared at the mosque, offering their support.

The Kufa demonstration began with armed marchers taking over the city's courthouse and traffic police headquarters. Several thousand chanting marchers then proceeded toward the city's occupation military base.

Journalists at the scene said Salvadoran troops manning the post first fired noise charges to disperse the crowd, then followed with live fire. A senior U.S. officer in Baghdad denied that occupation forces fired first.

The militiamen fired small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. At one point, several dozen swarmed toward a military vehicle caught outside the base, capturing and killing the Salvadoran soldier after warning bystanders to stand aside. Two other badly beaten Spanish-speaking soldiers were seen being taken into Sadr's headquarters at the Kufa mosque, and though the military adjusted its initial report of fatalities from four to two in the hours after the conflict, Sadr officials denied holding any prisoners.

Military officials announced Sunday that two U.S. Marines were killed in Anbar province west of Baghdad in separate violence, the Associated Press reported. The day's deaths brought to 611 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq in hostile and non-hostile situations.