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 city's huge cemetery and around the mausoleum of Imam Ali, one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines.
Artillery and tank shells earlier pounded positions in the 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.
In Baghdad's largest Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City, witnesses said the US military fired a missile into a residential area, destroying an empty house after a patrol came under attack.
Two explosions rocked the city centre as smoke was seen rising from the impoverished Sadr 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 municipality was attacked by gunmen and mortar rounds 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 ring out in Sadr City. Shops remained boarded up and the main road closed to traffic as armed militiamen roamed the streets, an AFP correspondent said.
As a curfew was imposed in the neighbourhood from 4:00 pm for a 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.
The health ministry said two people had been killed and 29 wounded in the Sadr City violence since Tuesday morning.
In the main southern city of Basra, three British military vehicles came under attack from small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, forcing them to return to base in the Al-Makal port area, witnesses said.
The health ministry said four people were killed and 18 wounded in Basra, while in Diwaniya province further north clashes left three people dead and 45 wounded.
Northwest of the central city of Kut, three civilians were wounded, one of them seriously, when a roadside bomb exploded as a Ukrainian convoy passed through Numaniyah, the town's police chief Colonel Ali Jabbar Kadhim said.
Kut fell briefly to Sadr's militia during a previous uprising in the spring but has since remained largely quiet.