Allawi vows to crush militia in Iraq

Just one day earlier, rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr evacuated his mosque bastions in Kufa and Najaf after Iraq's Shiite Muslim spiritual leader ordered him to empty the two cities of his militiamen.

Bu~ Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's five-point ultimatum made no mention of the cleric's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City or other Shiite cities in |he south where the Mehdi Army has clashed with coalition and Iraqi security forces.

In Sadr City, the US military said eight mortar bombs were fired at a US position on Saturday, smashing into an electricity sub-station and cutting power supplies, sporadic at the best of times, in the southwestern part of the slum.

Insurgents also fired two mortar bombs into a crowd of civilians, the spokesman added. "The government will not permit private armed groups to operate outside Najaf regardless of whether they are Al-Qaeda groups, Zarqawi groups, bin Laden or the so-called Mehdi Army," Allawi said.