US troops battle Shias in Najaf

The area has seen fighters loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr defy US-led coalition forces for more than a month.

The US military said 41 of Mr Sadr's Mehdi Army militia were killed on the edge of the town of Kufa, near Najaf.

The Americans have also retaken the Najaf governor's office on the outskirts of the city, apparently without any resistance.

The move came after the US-led coalition in Iraq named a new governor for the Najaf region.

The US military operation involved tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopter gunships. Plumes of smoke were seen rising from a cemetery on the outskirts of Najaf, as American helicopters swooped over the area.

Some of Shia Islam's holiest shrines are located in Najaf.

US forces have said they will refrain from entering the shrines. Any such move would cause widespread fury among Iraq's majority Shia population.

The lead US military spokesman in Iraq, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, insisted there was no new push into the city.

"We're not going to go wading into Najaf, we know how sensitive it is," he told Reuters.

Earlier on Thursday, the chief US civilian administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, named Adnan al-Sharifi as the new provincial governor for Najaf - and called on the militiamen occupying the city to lay down their arms.

"The people of the Middle Euphrates are eager for a return of normal life. They are going to have it," said Mr Bremer.

Elsewhere in Iraq, a suicide bomber killed five Iraqis and a US soldier outside an entrance to the main coalition headquarters in the capital Baghdad.

Several people were hurt, including two US soldiers said to be in a "very serious condition", in the first bomb attack to target coalition offices for weeks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3690669.stm