by Sammy Ketz
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug 19 (AFP) - Defiant Moqtada Sadr followers threatened to torch oil fields and die as martyrs Thursday, as fighting rocked Najaf after Iraq`s government threatened an offensive in the city "within hours".
Eight people were killed, at least five of them policemen, and 30 wounded when mortar bombs smashed into the provincial police headquarters in Najaf, police and a doctor said, while gunfire and explosions echoed through the city.
US tanks have taken up position just 200 metres (yards) away from Najaf`s Imam Ali shrine, effectively trapping Sadr`s men in one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam.
More than two weeks of clashes between Sadr`s Mehdi Army and US-led Iraqi government forces have reduced the historic Old City to rubble, with naked wires, spent mortar and rocket shells strewn across the deserted streets.
Government officials have voiced increasing impatience with Sadr, who was said Wednesday to have accepted conditions laid down by mediators from a national conference, namely disarming his militia and quiting the Imam Ali shrine.
On a visit to Najaf, Minister of State Kassem Daoud called on the fiery cleric to give a news conference, publicly agreeing to renounce arms, name all those tried by his religious courts and release all detainees.
He must also leave the shrine in Najaf and pull his loyalists out of the main mosque in the twin city of Kufa "otherwise the coming hours will be decisive", Daoud added.
"We have been preparing for a military offensive for five days to put an end to this crisis," the minister said.
But his warning was brushed aside by Sadr aide Ali Smeisim who told reporters Daoud was "not part of the negotiations".
"If there is a US conspiracy orchestrated by US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and US agents respond to it, then we`ll be happy to be martyrs of this nation," he said.
As intermittent bouts of heavy fighting petered out around the Old City, interior ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim said Sadr`s refusal to bow to government demands meant military action was on.
"Our position has been constant. Now we hear he`s actually refused any attempt to remove himself and his fighters from the shrine... it looks as though the fight is on," he told AFP.
Tired and angry Najaf residents have compared Sadr to deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, for holding them as hostages to fortune and bringing violnce to their pilgrimage city.
One Sadr aide told Al-Jazeera television that residents of southern Iraq had already burnt oil pipelines and threatened to torch oil wells across Iraq.
"After the declarations of the so-called Iraqi minister of state, in the name of his unjust government... residents of southern Iraq, mainly in Basra and Amara, have bombed several pipelines and are threatening to torch all the oil wells in the south," said Sheikh Aws al-Khafagi, head of the Sadr office in the southern city of Nasiriyah.
There was no official confirmation of Khafagi`s statements. Previous threats to oil infrastructure in southern Iraq have caused production to be halted and pipelines shut down, sending world oil prices soaring.
In Sadr`s northeastern Baghdad stronghold, two US soldiers were killed as troops pushed into the slums of Sadr City on Wednesday in an offensive that one officer said killed "slightly over 50 Iraqis".
The Iraqi health ministry reported 22 people killed and 106 wounded across the capital in the 24 hours to Thursday morning, based on statistics from hospitals.
South of Baghdad, two Polish soldiers were killed and five hurt when their patrol came under fire at Hilla, where Mehdi Army fighters have also clashed with Iraqi security forces, the PAP news agency said, quoting the military.
Kidnappers claiming to be holding US-based journalist Micah Garen have threatened to execute their captive unless US forces withdraw from Najaf within 48 hours, Al-Jazeera reported late Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a Turkish TV channel aired footage of yet another Turk taken hostage in the country
Iraq`s interim parliament, elected by default from one list of candidates at a national conference, will hold its first session on September 1, said conference organiser Fuad Maasum.
As new members hailed the development as a positive step on the country`s thorny road to democracy, those who lost out dismissed the assembly as a weak rubber-stamp for a government already dominated by big political parties.