THE bloodstained plazas around Najaf’s Imam Ali shrine turned into a war zone yesterday as American troops and Iraq’s most senior ayatollah appeared to be racing each other to gain control of the holy city.

After US Marines finally punched through the rebel al-Mahdi Army lines, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suddenly flew back to Iraq from Britain. He called on his followers to march in huge numbers on the holy city today to demand a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

US Marines told The Times that they expected to clear Najaf’s old city of Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr’s rebel militia in two days, after they “gained a foothold” in the ancient warren of streets for the first time during the three-week crisis.

But the military timetable was thrown into doubt when the 73-year-old Iranian-born ayatollah arrived back in Basra from London, where he underwent coronary surgery two weeks ago, apparently seeking to wrest the initiative back from Hojatoleslam al-Sadr.

“We ask all believers to volunteer to go with us to Najaf,” said a statement read out by Ayatollah al-Sistani’s spokesman, Hayder al-Safi. “I have come for the sake of Najaf and I will stay in Najaf until the crisis ends.”

Thousands turned out to give the ayatollah a hero’s welcome, and pledged to join the march. Aides said that he would present a plan to end the fighting when he arrived at Najaf. It was expected to include the withdrawal of all foreign troops, the laying down of arms, and respect for the law — meaning no militias. The military and political pincer movement threatened to leave Hojatoleslam al-Sadr, the renegade Shia cleric, as outflanked and isolated as his weary and rapidly diminishing band of fighters, who were pinned down yesterday by a lacerating barrage of US artillery and aerial bombardment that reached within 20 yards of the shrine’s mosaic walls.

Hojatoleslam al-Sadr will face serious political problems if Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani summons large crowds demanding that he hand over the keys to the shrine and leave the old city, where his followers have little support among Najaf’s residents. They yearn for an end to the violence, and resumption of the shattered town’s lucrative pilgrim trade.

Yesterday The Times slipped past fighting on the fractured front lines and saw bloody al-Mahdi fighters being carried on stretchers back to the golden-domed shrine, as US sniper rounds, machinegun-fire and air-to-ground missiles zinged through the streets.

The advancing American forces attacked the rebels’ inner defences, rockets obliterating vehicles and barricades.

After holding off US Marines for three weeks, the rebels retreated in desperation and slammed shut the massive gates of the shrine, as US snipers and tanks seized control of all approach roads to the ancient mosque. Entry to the fortress-style shrine has now become a game of Russian roulette, sprinting zig-zag across roads controlled by US snipers, trying to beat the marksman’s trigger finger.

The Mahdi Army appeared to be in disarray as one of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr’s most senior aides was arrested outside the old city, and confused fighters gathered beneath flimsy shop awnings in front of the shrine entrance, spitting defiance but unaware of where exactly the enemy was in the streets around them.

Reports of tanks and Iraqi Army forces within 20 yards of the shrine were grossly exaggerated — a senior US military official admitted to The Times that both claims were inaccurate.

A senior US Marine official denied the reports, saying: “Iraqi forces are not in there at the moment, they are right outside the old city in a supporting position. At some point in time they will be used.

“We will not be going into the shrine. That is for the Iraqi forces. We have not gone very far into the city, mostly for fear of collateral damage.”

At 11.00am The Times saw the 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi National Guard moving on foot through streets 500 metres south of the old city, advancing toward the front positions held by American Abrams battle tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

Sweating and nervous, they filed through the grid-pattern streets in classic urban warfare drill, front men dropping to their knees at crossroads to provide covering fire as colleagues moved past and through the junction, carrying rocket-propelled grenade-launchers, heavy machine-guns and Kalashnikovs.

Above, steel-grey Apache helicopter gunships skimmed television aerials, swooping over suspect buildings and releasing air-to-surface missiles that sent plumes of black smoke rising into the sky all over the southern approach.

Residents stayed indoors, terrified of snipers and tank fire. A donkey and its owner lay dead at a crossroads, no one daring to approach the corpses for hours.

Inside the old city itself journalists saw Mahdi frontline positions being repeatedly pounded by heavy US fire, but said that the militia’s hard-core fighters appeared to be well dug in.

This includes the two British fighters Abu Hakid and Abu Turab, who were seen on the eastern front line on Tuesday.

Others are scattered throughout the surrounding alleyways and markets, armed with grenade-launchers and machineguns, but now much reduced in numbers.

Hiding nervously across the street from the shrine itself, two confirmed that the enemy had, indeed, penetrated the old city.

Khaled Hader, 23, claimed that units of the Iraqi Army had approached from the west, but Ahmed Ali, 34, immediately contradicted him, saying: “There are just Americans in the old city.”

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