NAJAF, Iraq, Aug 10 (AFP) - US and Iraqi forces battled Shiite Muslim militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Sadr for a sixth straight day in Najaf on Tuesday with the violence being echoed in part of Baghdad.
In Najaf, US troops drove through the centre of the Shiite pilgrimage city, using loudspeakers to call on civilians to evacuate the combat zone immediately and militiamen to leave.
Residents said it was the first time US troops had called for evacuation and feared a massive attack on bastions of Sadr`s Mehdi Army in the cemetery and the shrine of Imam Ali, one of the holiest Shiite sites.
Artillery and tank shells earlier pounded positions in the vast cemetery and a thick column of black smoke rose near the Imam Ali shrine. Iraqi police in trucks were seen heading to the area while two US helicopters flew overhead.
The military accused insurgents of kidnapping people, including civilians and taking them to the cemetery for "torture, execution and burial".
"We will not allow them to continue to desecrate this sacred site, using it as an insurgent base of operations," said Colonel Anthony Haslam, commander of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Medics said 24 people had been killed and more than 100 wounded in the fighting since Thursday.
Meanwhile, witnesses in Baghdad`s Sadr City slum said the US military fired a missile into a residential area, destroying an empty house after a patrol came under attack.
Two explosions rocked Baghdad`s centre and smoke was seen rising from the cleric`s northeastern stronghold as US military jets roared overhead.
A US military spokesman said the smoke was caused by burning tyres.
He confirmed jets had flown over "as a sign of force to Sadr City and surrounding areas".
The district council hall was attacked by gunmen and mortar rounds were fired out of Sadr City at surrounding US bases, causing no damage, he added.
Earlier, clashes raged for three and a half hours when a US patrol came under repeated attack as it drove through the centre of the sprawling slum.
Sporadic gunfire and mortar rounds continued to explode in Sadr City. Shops remained boarded up and the main road closed to traffic as armed militiamen roamed the streets, said an AFP correspondent.
As a curfew was imposed in Sadr City from 4:00 pm for the second day running, a Sadr aide called on residents to defend their homes and urged police, security forces and insurgents to join the Mehdi Army in "their fight against the occupation."
"What is going on in Najaf and elsewhere is mass killing by the Americans and the so-called interim government," Qais al-Khazali told reporters.
In the south, three British military vehicles came under attack from small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades in Basra, forcing them to return to a base in the Al-Makal port area, witnesses said.
Northwest of Kut, three civilians were wounded, including one seriously, when a roadside bomb exploded as a Ukranian convoy passed through Numaniyah, said police local chief Colonel Ali Jabbar Kadhim.
The Shiite city of Kut, south of Baghdad, fell to Sadr loyalists in the spring before US forces and Iraqi police wrested back control in April.