An attack on a US convoy sparked a large fire in a marketplace in eastern Baghdad yesterday, as gunmen in Basra assassinated a police commander who was also a senior member of a leading Shiite political party.
Dozens of stalls were set ablaze at 2am local time when a bomb exploded next to a convoy of US military vehicles driving down a commercial street in the capital’s eastern district.
A Humvee was damaged in the blast, said an Iraqi police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Residents said more than a dozen US and Iraqi firefighting vehicles rushed to the scene to put out the blaze which continued until morning. The US military did not comment.
The attack comes amid continuing clashes between US and Iraqi forces and Shiite militias in eastern Baghdad.
The US military said militants firing rocket propelled grenades ambushed a patrol by US troops in eastern Baghdad late on Sunday night.
Armed helicopters and an Abrams main battle tank repulsed the attack, killing six of the gunmen, the statement said.
The government is demanding that radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr disband his Mehdi Army militia which has strongholds in Baghdad’s sprawling Sadr City neighborhood, the port city of Basra and other locations in southern Iraq.
Clashes in Basra have abated since a failed government offensive last month to dislodge militia groups. But sporadic violence has been continuing in the country’s oil capital.
Late on Sunday, unknown gunmen assassinated police Major Ali Haider, a commander in the department’s serious crimes directorate. Police said Haider was a member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a Shiite political party that is part of Maliki’s governing coalition.
Elsewhere in Iraq, US soldiers discovered a mass grave near Muqdadiyah, 90km north of Baghdad, the military said yesterday.
The grave site, which was unearthed on Sunday, contained 20 to 30 badly decomposed bodies that appeared to have been buried for nearly eight months, the statement said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi forces freed British journalist Richard Butler, a photographer for the US network CBS, who was kidnapped in Basra in February, Defence Ministry spokesman Major-General Mohammed al-Askary said.
“He is in good health. He is fine. He’s here with me,” Askary said by telephone from Basra.
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