NAJAF, September 12, 2004 - (KRT) - Three weeks of urban warfare killed at least 1,000 Iraqi rebels and civilians, the governor of this battle-weary city said Saturday in his first estimate of the death toll since the standoff ended two weeks ago.

During last month's relentless close-quarters combat between U.S. troops and militants loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, hospital officials and military officers had estimated the death toll in this southern holy city had climbed far into the hundreds, though most conceded any estimates could not be verified until fighting eased.

Now, two weeks after the violent standoff, Najaf Gov. Adnan Zurfi said Saturday that he put the death toll for insurgents and civilians "at over 1000 killed," based on hospital data and other measures he did not name.

That grim coda on the Najaf clashes came as the top U.S. commander in northwestern Iraq set a clock ticking on the newest front in the Iraqi insurgency, warning Saturday that insurgents who have infiltrated the northern city of Tal Afar will have a week to leave the city or face military reprisals.

Brig. Gen. Carter Ham said some 7,500 U.S. troops in the area are poised to reinstate local officials deposed by militias.

The remote cement-factory town of Tal Afar, 30 miles west of Mosul near the Syrian border, has been overrun by militias who have seized residents' homes and battled U.S. troops over the past 10 days, U.S. military officials said. The fighting has killed 67 insurgents, they said.

U.S. troops have sealed off roads leading to the city, but are permitting civilians to leave, residents and commanders say. Some residents are bristling at the partial blockade, which they say has interfered with efforts to return bodies for burial in Tal Afar and limited the ability of Iraqi National Guard troops to enter the city, residents said by phone Saturday.

Ham said the fighting may intensify if the insurgents don't leave the city.

"Instead of taking up the fight, they should turn themselves in or leave the city," Ham said. "The ones who have stayed have made their decision. They'll be no reconciliation with them."

U.S. officials have complained that foreign fighters and weapons brought across the loose border from Syria have ended up in Tal Afar. U.S. troops recently have been attacked nearly every time they venture from their base near Mosul, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a military spokesman. A few days ago, local and regional leaders called on Ham to tell him they had lost control of Tal Afar, Ham said.

In the troublesome south, local leaders in Najaf are also struggling to reclaim control, in hand with U.S. military and civilian officials who are eager to demonstrate that American aid can be unleashed as swiftly as its military might. Riding in a truck on his way to a school that his civil affairs unit has rehabbed, U.S. Army Sgt. Scott Carter, 32, said it is a matter of showing the Iraqi people that "we don't just blow things up."

"We're in a prime position to show the Iraqis why we are in this country," said Carter, part of a joint Marine-Army civil affairs team that is rehabbing schools, hospitals and other sites. "The insurgency is trying to win the hearts and minds of the people and if they win the hearts and minds of the people, no matter what we do here (with force) is going to be powerful enough."

Through several funding channels - including USAID, the Baghdad embassy and the military - the United States has earmarked tens of millions of dollars to refashion Najaf's primitive water and sewer systems, along with many schools.

"This school will be nice," said English teacher Hassan Sajid, 51, gazing at the half-repainted facade of Najaf's Nabuchnezzar School for Boys, where U.S. troops recently invested roughly $50,000 to spruce it up for the new year. "But there are many schools in other parts of the city that were seriously damaged in the last days of the fighting."

In Baghdad, a U.S. Army specialist convicted in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal was sentenced to eight months' confinement, reduction in rank to private and a bad conduct discharge, The Associated Press reported. The punishment for Spec. Armin Cruz was eased in return for testimony against others.

Cruz had served with the 325th Military Intelligence Battalion and is the first intelligence soldier to stand trial in the scandal.

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© 2004, Chicago Tribune.

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