NAJAF, Iraq—Tens of thousands of Christians have fled Iraq where fierce battles have raged on over this week, between American forces and the Mahdi Army militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The violence in Najaf, which started on 5th August, has threatened to destabilise the new interim government. Al-Sadr and his followers have fought U.S. and Iraqi forces from within the Imam Ali shrine, one of Shia Islam’s most sacred sites, and the fighting has also spilled over to other parts of the country.

The American tanks edged to within 500 yards of Najaf’s Imam Ali shrine, Iraq’s holiest Shiite site, and delegates at Iraq’s National Conference called on Monday for the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to abandon his uprising against the U.S. and Iraqi troops and pull his fighters out of a holy shrine in Najaf.

Hussein al-Sadr, a distant relative to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has spoken to the media as the head of a delegation to meet Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf to ask him to stop the fighting and join the political process instead during Iraq’s National Conference in Baghdad, Iraq Tuesday Aug. 17, 2004. The three-day conference, which has been called to elect a 100-member national council, has been extended by a day, the conference’s organiser said on Tuesday.

In January, Iraq is to hold elections to choose a transitional government. The newly elected government then will convene a national convention to draft a constitution to be put to the voters in October 2005. Iraqis will then hold another vote in December 2005 for a constitutionally based government.