U.S. Military Strikes Mosque in Karbala

Signs of peace and escalation

The American military attacked a mosque in this holy city on Tuesday in its largest assault yet against the forces of the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, even as the first signs emerged of a peaceful resolution to the five-week-long standoff with him.

The strike on the Mukhaiyam Mosque brought hundreds of American soldiers to within a third of a mile of two of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, the shrines of the martyrs Hussein and Abbas. A building behind the mosque was fired on, detonating a huge weapons cache, and soldiers stormed the mosque, chasing insurgents out into a hotel and alley.

Leaflets distributed earlier said in part: "I am ready to end everything if the occupation forces officially ask for negotiations, on the condition that these negotiations are just and transparent and under the stewardship of the Shiite religious authorities," the leaflets said. The leaflets bore Mr. Sadr's signature.

By 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, some 30 insurgents had taken up positions around the Shrine of Abbas, and they appeared to be lobbing mortars from that area at the Mukhaiyam Mosque. Special Forces soldiers began organizing groups of Iraqi forces to counterattack. Fighting was still intense five hours later. Casualties could not be immediately determined.

Members of Mr. Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army, fired rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47's from rooftops and the windows of dun-colored buildings. A military intelligence analyst estimated there were 50 to 70 militiamen barricaded in the mosque and surrounding buildings. The illuminated twin minarets of the Shrine of Hussein could be seen just a third of a mile to the east.

Tracer rounds arced through the sky as a Bradley fighting vehicle crashed through the rear wall of the mosque compound, then backed up and opened fire with a 25-millimeter canon. An attached storage building burst into flames, and then explosions began erupting. The building had clearly been used to store a huge cache of munitions — the explosions shook the earth for well over two hours.