BAGHDAD, Aug 22 (AFP) - Moqtada Sadr's militiamen remained in control of their Najaf mosque stronghold Saturday, as fears grew that an Italian journalist missing in Iraq since Thursday was kidnapped.
Sporadic gun and mortar fire rumbled on in Najaf, with US tanks still parked within shooting distance of the Imam Ali mausoleum, as armed fighters prowled the streets around what is one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines.
The force of morning shelling from the cemetery hurled shrapnel into the courtyard of the shrine without causing damage, an AFP correspondent said.
Four mortar rounds crashed into the office of Grand Ayatollah Bashir al-Najafi, the second most senior cleric in Najaf, on Friday evening, without causing any casualties, a statement from his office said.
But 17 days after the fighting broke out, it remained unclear when the militia would leave, with no agreement reached between Sadr and the Shiite religious hierarchy on the precise terms for ceding control of the shrine.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has insisted that the Imam Ali mausoleum be vacated, all its doors locked and the keys delivered in a sealed envelope, said Sadr aide Ali Smeisim.
After offering up the keys, Smeisim said that the ayatollah's Najaf office decided to form a committee to draw up an inventory of all the shrine's assets, but that Sistani had quashed the idea over security concerns.
"He said it was impossible to form such a committee in such difficult circumstances," Smeisim told AFP.
The Imam Ali shrine is packed with priceless objects and alms brought by pilgrims from all over the world.
Sistani is reluctant to take back the shrine without ensuring that nothing is missing and the Mehdi Army is unwilling to surrender control amid any suggestion of impropriety.
"So we proposed forming another committee, with the head of endowments, an accountant from endowments and people that Sistani trusts," Smeisim added. "We are now awaiting his response."
Militiamen and civilians who had volunteered to act as human shields were still camped out in the vast compound Saturday but there was some evidence that they were preparing to leave.
Meanwhile, there was growing concern that an Italian journalist from Diario newspaper missing in Iraq since last Thursday was probably the victim of a kidnapping in which his driver was killed.
Fears grew for correspondent Enzo Baldoni after what appeared to be the body of his driver-interpreter was reported found Saturday near Najaf.
"It does appear unfortunately that his driver is dead and if this is true it's likely there was an attack," said Gianni Barbaceto, a member of the paper's editorial staff: "The one was killed and the other kidnapped."
Baldoni, 56, had set out Thursday to reach Najaf with the aim of obtaining a personal interview with Sadr, a colleague was quoted Saturday as saying.
Earlier, Diario had sounded an optimistic note about Baldoni's fate.
But Barbaceto told AFP after the news of the dead driver: "The optimistic scenario we've been sticking to no longer works. We're especially worried because the Red Cross and the Italian army (in Iraq) tend to believe there has been a kidnapping."
But Barbaceto said so far there had been no claims of responsibility for the kidnapping, or ransom demands or video tapes of the kind hitherto shown of kidnapped foreigners in Iraq.
"A first series of contacts with influential Iraqi personalities has not yielded anything," he continued. "If it's a kidnapping then it sounds like a nasty gang."
According to reports, the driver-interpreter's body was found near Najaf and transferred to a mortuary near Baghdad.
But there was room for doubt about the body because of difficulties in making a positive identification, Barbaceto said.
In southern Baghdad, a US soldier was killed and two others wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade hit their vehicle, the military said.
A Polish soldier was also killed and six others wounded in a car bombing near Hilla, south of the capital, a spokesman told Poland's PAP news agency.
Polish troops with the international force in Iraq also reported the seizure of large quantities of weapons in the city of Karbala Saturday.
"The soldiers stopped a van during a routine street patrol," Krzysztof Plazuk, a spokesman for the Polish-commanded 6,500-man multinational division in the region, said.
Poland commands one of the four zones in Iraq and has sent 2,500 troops.
"The driver and some other men ran away from the vehicle which was carrying two rocket-launchers, five anti-tank rounds, 80 82-millimetre mortar shells, six 62-millimetre mortar shells, five missiles and three Kalashnikov rifles," said Plazuk.
The soldiers could not fire at the escaping men because of the presence in the streets of numerous civilians, he said.
Spokesmen for the division said the arsenal would have enabled insurgents to attack its bases for at least a month.