Intra-Shiite fighting had spread to Baghdad by Tuesday evening, when gunmen believed to be Mahdi militiamen attacked at least four offices of rival political factions. They burned Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Islamic Dawa Party buildings in the Kadhimiya neighborhood and kidnapped four guards at the council's headquarters.
In Sadr City, the Baghdad district that is the Mahdi Army's stronghold and home to 2 million Shiites, they raided Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council offices, killing five people and injuring 20. In the northeastern neighborhood of Husseiniya, gunmen used rocket-propelled grenades to destroy the offices of the council, which is headed by Najaf cleric Abdelaziz Hakim.
U.S. troops in armored vehicles secured the areas, Baghdad police reported.
Americans also surrounded one of Baghdad's top hotels in what police and hotel personnel said was an operation in search of Iranians suspected of weapons smuggling.
Videotape shot by Associated Press Television News showed U.S. troops leading about 10 blindfolded and handcuffed men out of the hotel. The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad would say only that a delegation from Iran's Electricity Ministry had been staying at the hotel.
U.S. forces on Monday raided what they said was a Sunni insurgent refuge north of Baghdad near the Shiite town of Khalis, and on Tuesday killed 33 suspected fighters of Al Qaeda in Iraq. There were no reported U.S. fatalities, which total 3,732 since the March 2003 start of the war here, according to the website icasualties.org.
In the Cairo neighborhood of northeastern Baghdad, five carloads of gunmen descended on a Sunni mosque, where they killed three people and kidnapped the imam and two assistants, police said.
A mortar shell fell in east Baghdad at 5 p.m., killing one civilian, and a car bomb earlier in the day outside the capital's civil defense headquarters killed one person and injured two.
The Karbala clashes were ignited late Monday when Najaf cleric Hakim's son, Ammar, arrived at the shrine with a phalanx of Badr Organization bodyguards. They were waved through the security cordon holding back the rest of the worshipers, including Mahdi militiamen, witnesses said. Three died in that initial fight and one of several wounded succumbed overnight.
By Tuesday, both factions appeared to be seeking revenge for the previous night's bloodshed.
