U.S. troops unleashed a daylong attack Thursday against the militia of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf, with helicopters, jets and tanks bombarding the holy city and risking a broad revolt among the nation's Shiite Muslim majority.

Knight Ridder News Service
August 12, 2004

Najaf, nearly 2,000 years old, is no stranger to conflict .. The city still has gruesome memories of what happened in 1991 when its citizens, encouraged by the U.S. after the first Persian Gulf war, rebelled against the Iraqi government in an uprising that pitted Najaf's Shiite population against Hussein's Sunni regime. The rebellion was crushed with heavy artillery, leaving some mosques and shrines a shambles.