Clash With Shiites Shifts To Baghdad; Seven Killed
"We hope this truce will continue, and we ask the U.S. forces not to enter the city and to stay in their bases," said Abdu-Amir Hussein, 35, who sells car parts in Najaf. "The Mahdi Army should also respect the truce and not violate it. We are peaceful people and do not like wars."
In northern Iraq, a rocket was fired at a line of Iraqis seeking jobs in the new national army being formed by U.S. trainers, wounding 16 potential recruits, Reuters reported from Mosul. It was the second such attack in a month, one of a series mounted against Iraqis seeking to work with occupation authorities or the Iraqi administration it has organized.
In the same city, about 215 miles north of Baghdad, unidentified gunmen killed a brother of the man believed to have informed the U.S. military on where to find the sons of former president Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay, the Associated Press quoted witnesses and hospital officials as saying. Both sons were killed July 22 in a U.S. attack on the house where they were hiding.
No one has ever officially revealed who turned in the Hussein sons, but Mosul residents have identified the informant as Nawaf Zidani, who they said collected a $30 million reward and disappeared. His brother, Salah Zidani, was killed when gunmen fired on his car.
Al-Jazeera television, meanwhile, broadcast videotape of a man identifying himself as a Kuwaiti truck driver delivering supplies to U.S. troops who was kidnapped by Iraqi gunmen as he drove toward the Iraqi capital. The driver, who gave his name as Saad Saadoun, was shown reading a statement, with a group of armed and masked men standing behind him.
"I promise I will not do this again, and I advise my brothers not to cooperate with the Americans," he said after prodding from his captors.
[On Sunday, the U.S. military announced that a U.S. Marine died Thursday from wounds received during a May 27 patrol and security operation in western Iraq's Anbar province, according to the Associated Press.]
Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, left, steps from an office building in Najaf, where a truce appears to hold. In the Baghdad slum of Sadr City however, militiamen attacked a police station with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
(Khalid Mohammed -- AP)
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