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Fighting In Kufa, Two Japanese Reporters Killed
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An Iraqi fighter passes by a burning U.S. military vehicle in Kufa (file photo)
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KUFA,
Iraq
, May 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Despite a truce
called 24 hours earlier between Iraqi scholar Moqtada Sadr and
U.S.
occupation forces, clashes broke out in the Iraqi Shiite city of
Kufa
Friday, May 28, as two Japanese journalists and their Iraqi translator
were killed.
"Militiamen
opened fire with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades when
three
U.S.
tanks advanced towards the center of Kufa," said
Sabah
al-Tamimi, an Iraqi journalist working for Iranian agency IRNA,
according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
He
said the tanks returned fire and stopped some 500 meters (yards) from
the Kufa Grand mosque where Sadr regularly gives a sermon at Friday
prayers.
According
to Al-Jazeera Satellite TV, Mehdi Army fighters only fired at
U.S.
troops to stop their advance towards Kufa's Grand Mosque.
"According
to the ceasefire deal, they (
U.S.
troops) should have evacuated Kufa. Instead, they were trying to
advance towards the center of the city. We had to stop them," a
spokesman for Mehdi Army told Al-Jazeera.
The
clashes came after a ceasefire started at
2:00 am
(2200 GMT Wednesday) Thursday between the two sides in an attempt to
overcome a major resistance problem facing the occupation forces.
Sadr
has offered to withdraw his fighters from Najaf and
neighboring Kufa as long as
U.S.
forces also pull back as part of an agreement to end nearly two months
of fighting that has left hundreds of Iraqi fighters and
U.S.
troops dead.
The
details of the deal are to be thrashed out in continued talks between
Sadr and senior Shiite politicians, Iraqi officials said.
The
deal does not provide for the disarmament of the militia and makes no
mention of other cities where the Mehdi Army is present.
Neither
was it clear if or when Sadr would go before a court to face charges
relating to the alleged murder of a rival scholar last year.
Occupation
spokesman Dan Senor said Thursday that the coalition was
"cautiously optimistic" about the chances of peace, but
insisted the truce was only a first step towards a lasting agreement.
Japanese
Killed
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Ogawa is one of the two Japanese reporters killed in Iraq
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Meanwhile,
two Japanese journalists and their Iraqi translator were killed when
their car was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade south of
Baghdad
Thursday, hospital and family sources said Friday.
"One
Japanese and his Iraqi translator are in the morgue but the police
told me they had the body of a second Japanese," said Imad
al-Malaki, a senior administrator at Mahmudiya hospital, according to
AFP.
"According
to my information, the incident happened at
6:00 pm
(1400 GMT) between Mahmudiya and Latifiya. A rocket was fired at their
car. The vehicle was incinerated and their corpses charred," he
added.
"One
of them is my brother. He was their translator. I recognized his nose,
his belt and his jeans. He was Mohammed. He was 48," said Sabah
Sabah Najmedin.
Another
hospital source said the driver of the car was wounded, but that his
relatives had taken him to
Baghdad
. The attack happened some 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the
capital.
Sources
at the Japanese embassy said only that they were investigating reports
that the reporters had been killed.
Early
Friday,
Tokyo
's top government spokesman said that two Japanese journalists had
been attacked in
Iraq
south of
Baghdad
.
He
identified the two men as Shinsuke Hashida, a 61-year-old freelance
journalist and veteran of war-zone reporting based in
Bangkok
, and his nephew Kotaro Ogawa, 33, from the western
Japan
city of
Tottori
.
Council
Member Attacked
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Khufaji blamed the occupation for the growing violence in Iraq (Photo courtesy of Al-Jazeera)
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In
another violent incident Thursday, the son of the Iraqi Governing
Council's only woman member, Salama Al-Khufaji, was also killed when
her convoy was attacked at Yusufiyah, 20 kilometers south of
Baghdad
, a council spokesman said Friday.
"The
head of Khufaji's protection unit told our correspondent in
Baghdad
that her son, Ahmad, drowned when the car in which he was traveling
fell in a river," Al-Jazeera reported.
A
bodyguard was also killed. Salama al-Khufaji herself had not been hurt
in the attack.
Khufaji
put the blame on the growing violence in
Iraq
on the U.S.-led occupation forces.
"Occupation
troops create that violence. They start it in all cases. If they stop
acting the violent way they do, we will not be seeing all that
violence," she told Al-Jazeera after surviving the attack.
Al-Khufaji,
a dentist, replaced another woman on the council who was killed in an
attack outside her
Baghdad
home in September, 2003. Akila
Al-Hashimi, a secular Shiite Muslim, died three days after being shot.
The
interim council's rotating chairman Ezzedine Salim was killed
ten days ago in a bombing outside the headquarters of the U.S.-led
occupation forces in
Baghdad
.
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