US marines have killed an estimated 300 fighters loyal to Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in fierce clashes around Najaf in the past two days, a senior US officer said on Friday. A spokesman for the cleric, however, dismissed the claim and said 36 militiamen had been killed.The fresh fighting, which still raged on Friday, marks a major challenge for the interim government of PM Iyad Allawi and appears to have destroyed a two-month ceasefire between US forces and Sadr’s Mehdi militia.‘‘The number of enemy casualties is 300 KIA (killed in action),’’ Lieutenant Colonel Gary Johnston, operations officer for the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said at a military base near Najaf. Asked about US casualties, he said there were two dead and 12 wounded.Yet Sadr appeared keen to stop the latest fighting. Via a spokesman in Baghdad, he called for a resumption of a truce struck in June. ‘‘We have no objections to entering negotiations to solve this crisis,’’ Mahmoud al-Sudani said. ‘‘As I have said in the name of Sayed Sadr, we want a resumption of the truce.’’Meanwhile, in Kufa, a message read out by Al-Sadr’s aide today declared US his enemy. ‘‘The Iraqi President said ‘America is our friend’, but I say ‘America is our enemy’,’’ said Sheikh Jaber Al-Khafaji, reading a statement. Sadr also warned Iraqi security forces against fighting alongside multinational troops. ‘‘I warn Iraqi police not to attack any peaceful demonstration,’’ Khafaji told worshippers at Kufa’s main mosque on behalf of the cleric.In Najaf, US military officials said there were indications that foreign fighters had joined the Mehdi militia. The US-appointed governor of Najaf put the militia death toll at 400, with 1,000 captured. He said he had information that 80 Iranians were fighting alongside Sadr’s militia.Even as British and Italian troops fought the militia across Shi’ite-dominated southern Iraq — in Basra, Amara and Nassiriya — Iraq’s interim government expressed confidence it would deal with the crisis. ‘‘We have every confidence in our new government, our security forces and our allies to contain this conflict,’’ Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said.The flare-up of tension with radical members of Iraq’s majority community comes after Shi’ite militants rose up across South and Central Iraq in April and May.Meanwhile, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said on Friday three Turks were being held hostage in Iraq while three others had been killed. ‘‘According to our information, three of our citizens are allegedly still being held hostage in Iraq and two are reportedly missing,’’ the Foreign Ministry said.In Fort Bragg in North Carolina, testimony in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal drew a disturbing picture of peril and turmoil at the jail. Sgt Hydrue Joyner, a member of England’s 372nd Military Police Company, called the prison hell and said he considered it a highly dangerous place when he arrived in October because ‘‘the whole prison system was corrupt’’.
