by Ahmed Fadaam
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug 28 (AFP) - Shiite Islam`s top clerics reaffirmed their opposition to armed resistance to US troops in Iraq Saturday, although the country`s hostage-taking crisis deepened as an Islamic group reportedly seized two French journalists.
At least 13 Iraqis, six of them policemen, were also killed in 24 hours of violence in the Sunni Muslim belt north and west of Baghdad.
Gunmen hanging out of minibuses shot dead six policemen, wounded another nine and injured two civilians at a checkpoint in Baquba, medics said.
Another person was killed in a mortar blast in the oil refinery town of Beiji, also north of Baghdad, the military said.
In Fallujah, to the west, five people were killed and 42 wounded, including children, as US forces battled Sunni insurgents over a 24-hour period in an area that has seen some of the bloodiest violence since last year`s invasion.
A leading academic was killed by assailants as she drove to her university department, while two Iraqi security guards were also seriously wounded in a shootout with US soldiers in the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, police said.
The Arabic satellite news channel Al-Jazeera reported that two French nationals were taken hostage in Iraq by Islamic militants demanding the rescinding of a ban on the Islamic headscarf in French state schools.
The kidnappers from the Islamic Army in Iraq, the same group which killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni after taking him hostage, gave Paris a 48-hour ultimatum to meet its demands, the Qatar-based television said, quoting "our own sources in Iraq".
The channel identified the kidnapped Frenchmen as missing journalists Christian Chesnot of Radio France Internationale and Georges Malbrunot of thev Paris daily newspaper Le Figaro, and said it had received video footage of the pair.
They went missing on August 20 after leaving Baghdad for Najaf, where US forces were fighting Shiite Muslim militiamen.
Kidnappings of journalists and other foreigners have become common in Iraq as insurgents attempt to force countries to withdraw their troops from the war-ravaged country or extort money.
The body of a Turkish truck driver was also found dumped on a roadside in Beiji along with a murdered Iraqi civilian, the Turkish embassy in Baghdad said.
Ramazan Erkul had been shot in the head before his discovery by Iraqi police on Friday, the embassy said.
Meanwhile, life sputtered back to normal in Najaf after peace returned to the holy city on Thursday.
The main thoroughfares were again clogged with traffic as shops reopened, but residents whose homes were pounded to dust seethed with fury at militia leader Moqtada Sadr for his three-week uprising against the Americans.
Three leading Shiite authorities held talks with the faith`s most revered cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who persuaded Sadr to end the conflict and quit Najaf`s holy Imam Ali shrine after a four-month occupation.
"We are not out of peaceful solutions yet to end the occupation but, when we are, no more words will be spoken and armed struggle will become a possibility," said a spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Bashir al-Najafi afterwards.
Ministers also flew in for a brief audience with Sistani, whose delivery of peace to the city after his triumphant return from medical treatment in London, proved him the undisputed leader of Iraq`s Shiite majority.
"We assured him that the construction process is already in progress, and we listened to his advice regarding not only the future of Kufa and Najaf but that of Iraq," State Minister Kassem Daoud said.
With the historic heart of the once glorious pilgrimage city reduced to ruins, the task of reconstruction is enormous.
Iran`s national heritage organisation has offered to pay for repairs to the Imam Ali shrine, where fire trucks hosed down the outer walls of the mosque compound, pockmarked with bullets and shrapnel.
Dozens of municipal workers swept what rubble they could into shovels, trucks and lorries, watched by armed Iraqi national guardsmen and police.
There was little sign of militiamen still on the streets, despite a US checkpoint set up on the northern side of the cemetery, an AFP reporter said.
Nevertheless, Daoud admitted Sadr`s fighters had not surrendered all their weapons to the authorities, defying one of three conditions laid down by the government for halting its US-backed assault on the militia.
"Most of the Mehdi Army are turning in their weapons but some are keeping them. Disarmament is continuing," Daoud said.
But many fighters have hidden their Kalashnikov rifles at home, and stashed mortars and rocket-propelled grenade launchers in safe houses.
"They will hide their weapons but will not hand them over to the police or to the army," Sadr spokesman Sheikh Ahmed Shaibani told AFP.
"Our fighters are still here. They will be able to go back to their work whilst remaining an army."