At least 12 people were killed yesterday as US troops battled insurgents who fired a salvo of mortars into Iraq's government compound, orchestrated two failed car bombings and assassinated a security official.
Militants loyal to alleged al-Qaeda operative and Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, claimed attacks on the heavily-fortified Green Zone housing the government and the US embassy and on the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
The battles raged hours after US-led troops across the country commemorated the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the US, blamed on al-Qaeda, which led to the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
At least 12 people were killed, including two children, and 41 wounded during intense fighting around Haifa Street, considered a bastion of Saddam Hussein loyalists, according to doctors at two local hospitals.
Mazen al-Tomaisi, a Palestinian working for Saudi and al-Arabiya television, died and two photographers were wounded in a US helicopter attack during the clashes, media sources said.
The fighting erupted after a suspected car bomb exploded two hours before dawn in Haifa Street where insurgents and US troops clash regularly.
Heavy machine-gun and assault rifle fire reverberated across the street for three hours and a tank was mobilized to support US troops.
As the sun rose at 6:30am, a car bomb struck the tank, wounding four people, a military spokeswoman said.
A pair of US helicopters then swooped down over the neighborhood and fired missiles into the mob, scattering at least five corpses across the ground.
The US military said the tank was destroyed from the air "to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people."
Simultaneously, two drivers were shot dead while trying to ram cars rigged with explosives into the high-security Green Zone and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, Iraqi and US sources said.
Another man was killed trying to smash his car through the compound of the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, the US military said.
An Iraqi police colonel also died in a car bombing on his way to work, a ministry spokesman said.
Gunmen attacked security forces guarding the Dibis and Kirkuk oilfields in two separate attacks yesterday, injuring five officers, a security official said.
He said the assailants fled the scene in the two attacks. No other details were available.
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