(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-26 10:34

Iraqi police and soldiers prevented journalists from reaching the areas of heaviest fighting, and it was unclear which side had the upper hand by sundown.

Iraqi military spokesman Col. Karim al-Zaidi acknowledged that government troops were facing stiff resistance.

Residents of one neighborhood said Mahdi Army snipers were firing from rooftops. Others fired rocket-propelled grenades at the troops, then scurried away on motorcycles. Other residents said police fled their posts.

Residents spoke by telephone on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals, and their accounts could not be confirmed.

British troops remained at their base at the airport outside Basra and were not involved in the ground fighting Tuesday, according to the British Ministry of Defense. Air support was being provided, but a spokesman would not say if it was US or British planes.

The British had given assurances that the Iraqis could handle security in the city when they withdrew last year.

In Baghdad, several salvos of rockets were fired at the US-protected Green Zone, which houses the American and British embassies. There were no reports of casualties, but the blasts sent people scurrying for concrete bunkers.

Lawmakers from al-Sadr's movement announced that a civil disobedience campaign which began Monday in selected neighborhoods of the capital was being extended nationwide. The campaign was seen as an indication that the Sadrists want to assert their power without provoking a major showdown with the Americans, who inflicted massive casualties on the Mahdi Army during fighting in 2004.

Iraq's national security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, was in contact with the Sadrist leadership in hopes of easing the crisis, said a top Sadrist official, Liwa Smeism.

Schools and shops were closed in many predominantly Shiite districts. "All shops are closed in my area except bakeries and vegetable stands," said Furat Ali, 35, a merchant in southwestern Baghdad.

Police also reported fighting between Iraqi security forces and Mahdi militiamen in the Shiite cities of Hillah and Kut, which lies on a major route between Baghdad and the Iranian border.

The showdown with al-Sadr has been brewing for months but has accelerated since parliament agreed in February to hold provincial elections by the fall. The US had been pressing for new elections to give Sunnis, who boycotted the last provincial balloting three years ago, a chance for greater power.

Al-Sadr's followers have also been eager for elections, believing they can make significant gains in the oil-rich Shiite south at the expense of Shiite parties with close US ties.

Sadrists have accused rival Shiite parties, which control Iraqi security forces, of engineering the arrests to prevent them from mounting an effective election campaign.

They also complain that few of their followers have been granted amnesty under a new law designed to free thousands held by the Iraqis and Americans.

"The police and army are being used for political goals, while they should be used for the benefits of all the Iraqi people," said Nassar al-Rubaei, leader of the Sadrist bloc in parliament. "If these violations continue, a huge popular eruption will take place that no power on Earth can stop."

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