Eight people were killed and a US helicopter was shot down as US troops battled Shia militiamen in Iraq on Thursday, while a suicide bombing and shootout outside a police station left another nine people dead.
US helicopters circled above Najaf cemetery, while heavy gunfire and mortar rounds boomed across the city. The clashes continued into late afternoon after a brief lull following the downing of a helicopter attached to the 11th Marine Expeditionary unit.
"A UH-1 marine helicopter was shot down at about 11:45 am (0745 GMT)," a military spokesman said. The two crew members were recovered alive, although the extent of their injuries was not immediately known, he added.
Najaf's general hospital, near the scene of the fighting in 1920 Revolution Square, came under rocket attack, killing a doctor and seriously wounding four other staff members, a Health Ministry official said.
In all, medics said four people were killed and 19 wounded in the clashes, which erupted overnight when Shia radical leader Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army militia attacked Iraqi police.
And in what could be a sign of a fresh co-ordinated onslaught against foreign troops, Sadr's representative in Iraq's second city of Basra declared holy war against British forces after four of their comrades were arrested.
Three militiamen were killed and another three wounded in a brief skirmish with British troops in northern Basra, Sheikh Saad al-Basri said.
"We will wage Jihad and war against the foreign troops, not against police and Iraqi forces," he vowed earlier.
"However, if they (the Iraqi personnel) fight on the side of the occupiers, we will strike them harshly."
A military spokesman said British troops came under three small arms fire attacks that caused no multinational casualties or damage to equipment. Two projectiles were fired at a multinational base camp in Sibah, south of Basra on the Kuwaiti border, causing no harm, the military said.
In Sadr's Baghdad slum stronghold of Sadr City, another person was killed and two others wounded in fighting between US forces and the Mehdi Army, officials at Al-Shuader Hospital said. Back in Najaf, Sadr aides accused US troops of damaging a minaret of the city's holiest shrine, the mausoleum of Hazrat Imam Ali (RA).
"The occupation forces and those collaborating with them attacked the mausoleum of Hazrat Imam Ali (RA) and we call on Muslims to help in defending this holy place," his fighters shouted over loudspeakers.
The US military branded the overnight clashes an "overt violation" of a June truce, which had quelled Sadr's uprising.
Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib told a Baghdad news conference that the government would not negotiate with the militias.
"We are not going to go into any negotiations. We are going to fight these militias. We have enough power and enough strength to stop and kick those people out of the country," he said.
He said Iraqi security forces had captured "many groups" linked with alleged al Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and "other movements aimed at destroying Iraq".
Further north, in Mahawil, at least nine people were killed and more than 20 wounded when gunmen opened fire and a suicide bomber blew up a minibus outside an Iraqi police station, police said.
Four insurgents were shot dead when gunmen drove up to the Mahawil station and opened fire at officers outside, a police colonel at the scene said.
Minutes later, when a small minibus hurtled towards the building, five policemen were killed as the driver blew himself up, the colonel added.
Meanwhile, the family of a Jordanian businessman, one of dozens of foreigners abducted in Iraq, said Adel Ubeidallah had been freed and was flying back to Amman, after they paid a $100,000 ransom. And a Turkish trucker has been killed in an attack in northern Iraq while two others were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen, Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported.