...In another development the Americans were watching, reports from inside Najaf said that the growing anger of residents there against al-Sadr and his men, who have sown a pattern of lawlessness since their uprising in the city began earlier this month, had taken a startling new turn, with a shadowy group killing at least five militiamen on Sunday and Monday.
These reports, from residents who reached relatives in Baghdad by telephone, said that the killers called themselves the Thulfiqar Army, after a two-bladed sword that Shiite tradition says was used by the patron saint of Shiism, Imam Ali, the martyred son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed. The group distributed leaflets in Najaf threatening to kill members of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army unless they fled Najaf immediately, according to accounts.
One Najaf resident said that some of al-Sadr’s militiamen were shedding the black clothing that has been their signature. The same resident said he knew of two killings of Mahdi Army members on Sunday and that three others had been killed later on Sunday or Monday.
If reports of violence against al-Sadr’s followers suggested that the American occupiers might be seeing the beginnings of Iraqis taking action of their own to curb the cleric -- as L. Paul Bremer, the chief American administrator, has urged -- events in Baghdad on Monday underscored how potent a force al-Sadr remains, at least among many volatile young Shiites who have found a release from their impoverishment in the cleric’s anti-American oratory...
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