A US Army tank burns after it came under attack in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood. The occupants escaped with minor injuries. (Reuters)

BAGHDAD — US forces closed in on Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf yesterday as Iraqis decided to make a last-ditch attempt to avert bloodshed.

US tanks rolled into the Old City of Najaf toward the mosque where militants were hiding.

The city, which had been quiet early yesterday, was hit by a series of explosions in the late morning that shook the vast cemetery, the scene of many battles between US forces and militants. Witnesses said US tanks had moved to within 500 meters of Imam Ali Mosque.

“We are proceeding with our operations. We are moving forward and we captured some positions inside the Old City from the south during the night and this morning,” Najaf police chief Ghaleb Al-Jazaeri said.

The National Conference in the capital Baghdad, an unprecedented gathering of 1,300 religious, tribal and political leaders from across Iraq, voted to send a delegation to Najaf to ask Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr to tell his followers to drop their weapons and join the country’s political process.

A team of 50 delegates, however, delayed their departure for the southern city for a day. “We could not work out all the logistics in time, but we plan to leave first thing tomorrow morning,” said Fawzi Hamza, one of the participants who was charged with delivering a statement to Sadr personally. Fawzi hoped the message would be well-received by Sadr.

Sadr’s aides said they supported efforts to end the violence. “We are ready to accept any mediation for a peaceful solution,” Sadr aide Ahmed Al-Shaibany said. At the same time, Shaibany called on tribal chiefs throughout Iraq to travel to Najaf to form human shields to protect Sadr’s Mehdi Army and the mosque.

Sunday’s renewed fighting caused minor damage to the outer wall of the mosque, ripping off some tiles and leaving some holes.

The new clashes in Najaf killed two US soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division, the military said. A third soldier was killed in volatile Anbar province, the center of the country’s Sunni insurgency. At least 934 US service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003.

A Syrian driver and his two Lebanese colleagues held hostage in Iraq have been released, the mother of the Syrian said. She told Reuters by telephone from Syria that her son Osama Issa and Lebanese drivers Taha Al-Jundi and Khaldun Osman were all on their way home. They were taken hostage on a road west of Baghdad earlier this month.

An American journalist, Micah Garen, was kidnapped Saturday in the southern city of Nassiriyah while he was reporting on archaeological sites in the area, the city’s Deputy Governor Adnan Al-Sharifi said.