23 killed as Shiite fighters, US forces clash in Baghdad
BAGHDAD (AFP) — Fierce clashes on Sunday between Shiite militiamen and US forces in Baghdad killed at least 20 people while three American soldiers died and 31 were injured in rocket attacks, officials said.
The surge of violence came as Iraqi leaders called for all militias to be disbanded ahead of provincial elections in October.
Security and defence ministry officials said women and children were among the 20 dead and 52 wounded in clashes in Baghdad's eastern Sadr City district that erupted at around midnight and continued sporadically through the day.
The US military said it launched two air strikes in Sadr City, bastion of the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr at around 8:00 am (0500 GMT) in which nine "criminals" were killed.
An "air weapons team" (AWT) fired a Hellfire missile and killed three fighters who were "firing rocket-propelled grenades at Iraqi soldiers," said US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Steve Stover.
"The team identified four more criminals fleeing the scene and attempting to hide their weapons in a vehicle. The AWT fired a missile and destroyed the vehicle and killed the six criminals," he said in a statement.
In the afternoon, Jamila food market, one of the biggest in Iraq and located in Sadr City, was set ablaze during a firefight, sending thick black smoke billowing skywards.
Local resident Wessam Jaffar said the market caught fire after a nearby joint Iraqi-US outpost came under mortar and gunfire attack.
Stover blamed "criminal elements" whom he said attacked the market with 107mm missiles "while it was packed with shoppers."
He said the US military has deployed Bradley and Abrams tanks as well as Stryker armoured troop carriers in Sadr City in operations designed to "take away mortar and rocket sites."
He said "criminals" were firing mortars and rockets from the area into Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, seat of the Iraqi government and the US embassy.
A US military spokeswoman said that separate rocket attacks mid-afternoon on the Green Zone killed two American soldiers and wounded between 17 and 19 others.
Another attack around about the same time on a US military base in Rustumiyah in eastern Baghdad killed one soldier and wounded 14, she said.
A wave of rocket and mortar attacks on the Green Zone began two weeks ago and they have become an almost daily occurrence, scaring US personnel into sleeping in the embassy building rather than in their trailers, where two of their colleagues were killed in the first wave of attacks.
Sunday's clashes and rocket attacks come just days before a protest on April 9 in Sadr City called by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr against the presence of US forces in Iraq.
It coincides with the fifth anniversary of the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, and Sadr's office says it expects at least one million people to attend.
Shiite fighters, mostly from Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, have been clashing with security forces since March 25 after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown on militiamen in the southern city of Basra.
The military assaults triggered firefights across Shiite areas of Iraq, including Sadr City, that killed at least 700 people, according to the United Nations.
Iraq's political leaders, meanwhile, urged the disbanding of militias throughout the country in a move seen as pressuring Sadr to rein in his fighters ahead of provincial elections on October 1.
Members of the top-level Political Council of National Security met at President Jalal Talabani's office on Saturday and framed a 15-point statement aimed at disarming the militias, most of them aligned to political parties.
The council comprises the president, the prime minister and the heads of the various political blocs.
"The militias should be integrated into civilian activities as a condition for participating in the political process and the next elections," Talabani's office said in a statement.
Sadr boasts Iraq's most powerful militia with an estimated 60,000 fighters.
