A fire also burned at the West Qurna oil fields near the southern port city of Basra after insurgents blew up a pipeline there Friday.
At Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad, family members and friends gathered around wounded fighters just back from Najaf. The visitors, many of whom traveled through fighting in Sadr City to reach the hospital, offered the fighters soda, kisses and words of encouragement.
Smoke bellows across the sky in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, where a new round of clashes broke out between insurgents and U.S. troops.
(Karim Rahim -- AP)
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"Shooting is going on in the neighborhood. It's really bad," said Muthana Jumaa, a Sadr City resident who was visiting a friend. "It was dangerous coming here, but I wanted to take the risk of coming to see him. It's dangerous everywhere."
Jumaa and his friend, Muhammed Khowayr, said they had to travel to Najaf, responding to a call issued by Sistani to participate in a peaceful march. They said they were standing outside a mosque in Kufa on Thursday when more than a dozen people were killed in a mortar attack. More than 60 people were injured, including Khowayr, an employee in the telecommunications ministry.
In his home in the Kadhimiya neighborhood, Jafar Ali Muhammed, 27, who had fought in Najaf, said the battle had been long and exhausting, and that some of his comrades had been killed.
Muhammed said that after the peace deal was brokered, he returned to Baghdad for a 24-hour visit with one priority: marriage. He said he was worried that if he waited, the war he expected to resume at any time would interrupt his plans.
He was slow getting to his fiancee's house because he had to ask Sadr's local office for $30 to buy an engagement ring. He had spent his savings of $1,400 on weaponry. By the time he was ready to see her, word came that a U.S. tank had parked across from her home.
Muhammed's mother said that she, too, had joined the fight in Najaf and vowed to continue fighting in the future.
"I left my kids here and went to fight in Najaf," said Itihad Jamil, 47, smiling gently and pushing her black veil from her eyes. "We are going to fight them until we throw them out of Iraq. Our country is our country."
