NAJAF, Iraq, Aug 12 (AFP) - US and Iraqi government forces risked a violent religious backlash Thursday as they closed in on one of the holiest sites for Shiite Muslims in their "final assault" on rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr's militia.
The gold-domed tomb of Prophet Mohammed's son-in-law Ali held by Sadr's Mehdi Army has for centuries made the city of Najaf a place of pilgrimage for Shiites seeking his blessing.
The religious importance of Najaf to Shiites, who consider Ali the true successor to the Prophet, was highlighted in early April 2003 when US troops invading Iraq entered the city of half a million.
They were confronted by hundreds of angry civilians who blocked soldiers from approaching the shrine, which is off-limits to non-Muslims.
On August 29, as religious and tribal unrest gripped Iraq in the wake of the US-led occupation, a car bomb went off outside the shrine after Friday weekly prayers, killing more than 80 people, including top Shiite political leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim.
Hakim's mourning brother, Abdel Aziz, drew a parallel between his death and the martyrdom of Imam Ali and his son, Hussein. They were slain along with their supporters in 680 AD in a battle against the troops of the rival Ummayad caliph, based in Syria.
"We will continue to follow the path of Imam Hussein, the path of jihad, sacrifice and martyrdom," Abdel Aziz, a member of Iraq's then interim Governing Council, told Lebanon's Al-Manar television.
Najaf lies 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of Baghdad.
Closer to the capital lies Karbala, where Imam Hussein is buried. After Mecca and Medina, which are holy to all Muslims, they are the two main pilgrimage sites for the world's Shiites.
The mosque at the Tomb of Ali contains vast numbers of precious objects left behind by pilgrims over the centuries in a sign of veneration.
First built in 977 AD, it was rebuilt after a fire in 1086 AD and again in 1500 AD. Its dome is covered with 7,777 panels of pure gold.
Tradition has it that Ali's burial place was kept secret for centuries to protect it from desecration by the Umayyad caliphs and that a later caliph, the Abbasid Harun al-Rashid, chanced upon it during a hunting trip.
It was he who ordered the breathtaking shrine to be constructed.
For more than one thousand years since, the Shiite faithful have flocked to the site to pay their respects.
On May 25, during an earlier standoff with the Mehdi Army before a truce brought a lull in the fighting a mortar round exploded inside the mausoleum, injuring 10 people and damaging the upper part of one of the main gold-covered gates leading to the tomb.
The Mehdi Army blamed US forces, which denied responsibility.
Earlier in the month each side accused the other of firing shots that punctured the dome.
Near the mausoleum is the "Valley of Peace," the largest burial site in the Islamic world, a stronghold of the Mehdi Army that has been the scene of heavy fighting in the past week.
An estimated two million Shiite faithful are buried in the 10-square-kilometer (almost four-square-mile) site.
During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s the maze-like cemetery was expanded to cope with the huge number of war casualties, and army deserters were known to hide among the tombs.
The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian revolution, spent 14 years in Najaf between 1964 and 1978, organising opposition to the shah's regime in Tehran, overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution.
In 1991, when Shiites rose up against president Saddam Hussein's regime, Najaf was the site of fierce clashes and later needed serious repairs. Thousands of Shiites, who form Iraq's majority, were killed in the repression.
The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi issued a statement Thursday assuring that the holy shrine would remain safe this time, stressing he had not approved the entry of US-led multinational forces into the mausoleum.
"His excellency is holding the armed elements inside the shrine responsible for any harm or damage that may occur," it said.
And Najaf deputy governor Jawdat Kadam Najem al-Kuraishi has resigned in protest against "all the US terrorist operations that they are doing against this holy city".