Mahdi Army Fights Coalition all over Iraq

Mahdi Army Fights Coalition in Baghdad, Karbala, Basra: Takes control of Shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf

Private Guards Repel Attack on U.S. Headquarters

An attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia members on the U.S. government's headquarters in Najaf on Sunday was repulsed not by the U.S. military, but by eight commandos from a private security firm.

Before U.S. reinforcements could arrive, the firm, Blackwater Security Consulting, sent in its own helicopters amid an intense firefight to resupply its commandos with ammunition and to ferry out a wounded Marine, the sources said.

Nassiriya: Iraqi Shi'ite Militia Battles Italian Troops

Violence in Sadr City reminds one of Mogadishu

U.S. commanders, who reported eight dead and 40 wounded, termed the battle for Sadr City the capital's largest and longest engagement since the fall of Baghdad almost a year ago. Between the 5 p.m. ambush and the calming of the area seven hours later after the decisive arrival of a tank column, about 1,000 American soldiers churned into the filthy streets of Sadr City to reassert authority in a slum that had become home to the Mahdi Army, an anti-American militia answering to a firebrand young Shiite cleric, Moqtada Sadr.

As a fighting force, Sadr's militia impressed neither U.S. commanders nor the Iraqi officers at one police station they occupied for three hours.

"Mahdi Army! They're not an army!" Officer Haider Raheem said of the unemployed young men who took over one station by brandishing grenades. "They're a bunch of looters." Before running off at the sound of approaching tanks, Raheem said, they scooped up everything from rifles to food for the prisoners. "Can you believe they even stole the water cup from the restroom?" he said.

"It was really a mob," Dempsey said. "A mob with a lot of weapons."

An Apache attack helicopter skimmed overhead, and two girls and a boy of grade-school age aimed their fingers toward it, shouting "Pow! Pow! Pow!"