"The operations are ongoing and the army will surely intervene if these operations become bigger," Shaalan said in extracts of an interview with Al-Arabiya television to be broadcast in full at 1900 GMT.

Militiamen loyal to the Shiite Muslim radical cleric, who has opposed the continued presence in Iraq of foreign troops, have been engaged in fierce clashes with US marines and Iraqi security forces in the central Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf for five days.

"We will use the multinational forces for air cover as the Iraqi forces will be enough to crush" the Sadr militia, which he said were backed by "criminal gangs," said Shaalan.

"We have discovered that there are factions and brigades which came from (the southern cities of) Basra, Nasiriyah, Diwaniyah and Hilla" to Najaf, he said.

"We will crush the gangs that are present there as soon as possible in order to establish stability in the city which has had enough of these criminals," the minister vowed.

"Undoubtedly, we will confront them and it will be a tough and solid strike on them," he told the Dubai-based channel.

Shaalan also said the militiamen were receiving weapons from across the borders with Shiite Iran.

"Iran has left a fingerprint in Najaf. There are weapons made inside Iran that were found in Najaf in the hands of these criminals which have received these arms through the Iranian borders," he said.

"Facts about what has happened to the Iraqi people show ...that (Iran) is the number one enemy," Shaalan added.

The minister said in press interviews last month that Iran is his country's "first enemy" and Baghdad had seen "clear interference in Iraq by Iran" in order "to kill democracy."

The statement sparked a war of words with Tehran, and on Sunday, a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq said it had "detained" an Iranian diplomat near Baghdad and accused Iran of "blatant interference in Iraqi internal affairs."

WAR.WIRE