Sadr men say shrine still in their control

A senior Interior Ministry spokesman earlier said police had entered the shrine and arrested hundreds of militiamen. But soon after the seizure was announced, a senior Sadr aide said the statement was untrue.

‘‘The shrine is in the control of the Mehdi Army,’’ said Sheikh Ahmad al-Sheibani, a top militia commander. ‘‘The Mehdi Army will resist any attempt by the Iraqi police to control the shrine.’’

‘‘Procedures are under way to hand over control of the shrine to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,’’ he added, referring to Iraq’s most influential Shi’ite cleric. Sistani told his aides in Najaf to prepare to accept the keys to the mosque, a spokesman for Sistani said.

US Rear Admiral Greg Slavonic said he could not confirm the Najaf mosque was in government hands. He added there were rumours Sadr had fled but his whereabouts were unknown.

‘‘We have no confirmation or intelligence on where he may be,’’ Slavonic said.

At least 77 Iraqis were killed and around 70 wounded in US air strikes and heavy fighting in the last 24 hours in the city, health officials said.

The Interior Ministry spokesman, Sabah Kadhim, appealed to Sadr to turn himself in. ‘‘The Iraqi police are now in control of the shrine, along with the religious authorities,’’ he said.

Allawi had pledged his forces would not storm the site. ‘‘We are not going to attack the mosque, we are not going to attack Moqtada al-Sadr in the mosque,’’ the interim Prime Minister told BBC Radio, adding Sadr’s militia had wired it up with explosives.

Meanwhile, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Friday urged the US to respect the sanctity of Muslim holy sites in Iraq and to avoid civilian casualties. Musharraf telephoned the Commander-in-Chief of the US Central Command Gen John Abizaid to express concern about the sites, particularly the Imam Ali mausoleum in Najaf, Pakistan’s official APP news agency reported.

In another development, a US hostage in Iraq, Micah Garen, appearing on a videotape, has called on the US to stop the bloodshed in Najaf, Al Jazeera television said on Friday. ‘‘He said he was asked to send a message to the American people to work to stop what he called ‘the Najaf massacre’… he added that he is receiving good treatment,’’ the channel said.

(Additional reporting by Mussab Khairallah and Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Baghdad and Andrew Cawthorne in London)

— (Reuters)