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Baghdad ambush opens dangerous new front for US

Another dangerous front opened for the US military in Iraq yesterday after two soldiers were killed in an ambush in Baghdad's volatile Sadr City suburb following a shootout between US forces and a Shiite militia in the wake of a car bomb blast that killed nine people.

Thursday's car bomb attack on a police station in the poor and densely-populated Shiite suburb stirred up trouble between the US occupying forces and young firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, the founder of the thousands-strong Mehdi Army militia and a vehement foe of the US presence in Iraq.

"Two 1st AD [armored division] soldiers were killed in action and four wounded in an ambush" in Sadr City on Thursday at 8:00pm, the US military said in a statement.

It was not clear if the soldiers' deaths came in the same firefight between US troops and the Mehdi Army that left one Iraqi militant dead and wounded two others, according to members of Sadr's militia.

The chaos in Sadr City followed Thursday morning's car bombing which killed three Iraqi policemen, five civilians and the suicide bomber, according to a US military police spokesman.

A hospital official said another 38 people were wounded in the blast, which sent bodies flying onto the roof of the police station.

It was the deadliest attack since a car bomb killed influential moderate Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim and 82 others in the Muslim holy city of Najaf on August 29.

The blast increased tensions among the country's Shiites, still reeling from Hakim's death, as the young cleric's followers, angered by US forces searching Moqtada Sadr's offices, paraded the streets, toting assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Meanwhile violence continued in the flashpoints north of Baghdad, notably in Baquba, the day after a US soldier died in an RPG attack in the town 65km northeast of the Iraqi capital.
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