Aid agencies and health ministry struggle to help Najaf injured and displaced

Iraqi's health ministry, along with aid agencies, have been battling to cope with hundreds of injured and the feeding of thousands of families made homeless by three weeks of fighting in the southern cities of Najaf and Kufa as Shi'ite rebels began handing in weapons and leaving Najaf's holy shrine on Friday. Tens of thousands of pilgrims flocked to celebrate a peace deal reached overnight to end the bloody uprising. Fighters tossed AK-47 assault rifles and mortar launchers into wooden carts being pushed around near the sacred Imam Ali mosque after an order from renegade cleric Moqtada al-Sadr for his Mehdi Army militia to disarm and leave the shrine. Grand Ayatollah Ali -al-Sistani - Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric - made a dramatic return to Najaf on Thursday and persuaded Sadr to accept his peace initiative after a day of violence in which at least 85 people were killed and 360 wounded, health ministry spokesman Saad al-Amily told IRIN by phone. On the same day, two mortars were fired into the Kufa mosque and one exploded outside it at about 10:30 a.m. local time, according to US Major John Wagner. He said he had no further details on the attack, as the US has no forces in Kufa. ''The multinational forces had nothing to do with the attack on the mosque,'' Technical Sergeant, Eric Grill, told IRIN by phone. The attack on Kufa's main mosque killed at least 27 Sadr supporters as hundreds of his men gathered inside, officials said. Twenty more people were killed when gunmen opened fire on supporters of al- Sistani who were marching to Najaf from Kufa, carrying pictures of the cleric, Reuters reported. Hundreds have been killed in the past three weeks in fighting between the militia and US and Iraqi government forces. Following Thursday's mortar attack, CNN broadcast footage showing the blood-stained ground in Kufa, strewn with bits of clothing and sandals with medical staff tending to injured people. Clashes in the cities of Baghdad, Hela and Basra and in Diwania province, killed 13 people and injured 68 others in the same period, al-Amily added. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has provided three mt of emergency medical and surgical aid to the holy city of Najaf, including anaesthetics, painkillers, fluid for intravenous drips, antibiotics, drains and sutures. "We have been supporting Najaf since the start of the fight with food and medical supplies and two days ago [Wednesday] we sent three trucks carrying water, medicines and food," Ahmed al Rawi of ICRC's communication office in Baghdad, said. ICRC has been supporting families that left Najaf since the beginning of the fighting three weeks ago. Many had sought shelter at mosques between Najaf and Dwania, 60 km to the east of the holy city. Scattered on the road to Dwania are at least 130 families that have been supplied with food, water and medicine. "We have supplying this area every day with about 300 thousand litres of water as well as Sadr city [a Shiite Baghdad suburb] with 550 thousand litres of water every day," al Rawi added. The ICRC had also been supporting the work of the medical health directorate in Najaf, as well as other humanitarian organisations like French-based NGO Premier Urgence and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). "Today was one of the most difficult days in Najaf. We didn't expect the [mortar] attack in the morning and its was really difficult to attend to so many injuries. We have no anaesthetic and few pain killers," Raad Abbas, a volunteer nurse at Hakim hospital, the main health facility in Najaf, said. The health ministry had sent more ambulances to the area - a dangerous task for the crews. "We go out to help injured people because of the fighting, but any time we can be one of them," Ali al-Obaid, one of the ambulance drivers, remarked. A religious official coordinating aid for Najaf said a truck and an ambulance taking supplies from Baghdad to the southern city had been attacked but had no further information.