US mulls sending more troops to Iraq

More than 50 people have been killed in fighting with Sadr supporters known as the Mehdi Army militia, mainly in southern Iraq.

In central Iraq, US Marines on Monday launched a long-awaited offensive against the Sunni Muslim insurgency in the town of Fallujah, a hotbed of support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

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One Marine was killed as his comrades kicked off Operation Vigilant Resolve to hunt down the insurgents that slaughtered four US contractors in Fallujah last week.

Marines slapped an 11-hour night curfew on the city as patrols blared messages telling people not to leave their homes.

And yet another threat -- Jordanian Mussab al-Zarqawi, the alleged leader of a network linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and believed responsible for several terror attacks in Iraq -- threatened US-led forces in a recording broadcast Monday on a radical Islamist website.

In the message said to have originated from inside Iraq, Zarqawi claimed that his "heroic Mujahedin have killed more than 200 soldiers from the coalition of the crusaders."

But the Marine operation and Zarqawi's alleged threats were overshadowed by the running battle with Sadr's radical Shia followers.

Iraq's majority Shias initially welcomed US-led coalition forces after decades of vicious rule by Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.

The wave of Shia radical violence has now raised serious alarm for coalition troops, already burdened by a Sunni insurgency. A full revolt among the country's 15 million-plus Shias would spell disaster.

A coalition spokesman revealed Monday an arrest warrant against Sadr for the murder of a rival cleric, Abdel Majid al-Khoei, last April, days after the fall of Saddam.

Sadr is currently barricaded in a mosque in the Shia shrine city of Kufa, and his aides vowed that he would never be captured.

The coalition's deputy director of operations, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, promised Sadr would be treated with respect if he surrendered, despite the deaths of one Salvadoran and eight US soldiers in clashes with his illegal Mehdi Army militia Sunday.