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Iraqi forces battle Shiite gunmen in southern Baghdad

Iraqi security forces battled Shiite gunmen south of Baghdad on Friday, raising tensions among rival factions of the country's majority religious community and straining a seven-month ceasefire proclaimed by the biggest Shiite militia.

Also on Friday, a US soldier was killed and four others wounded in a rocket or mortar attack south of the capital, the US military said. The death raised to at least 3,993 US troops who have died since the war started five years ago.

The statement did not provide more details about the location and the area has a volatile mix of Sunni and Shiite extremists.

The fighting in Kut, 160km southeast of Baghdad, broke out on Thursday night when factions of the Mehdi Army, led by anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, attacked checkpoints throughout the city, officials and witnesses said.

Two policemen and two gunmen were killed during the clashes in Kut, which ended on Friday, Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.

Also on Friday, US and Iraqi forces raided neighborhoods of southern Baghdad and Diwaniyah, 130km south of the capital, detaining suspected members of the Mehdi Army, Iraqi police said.

Al-Sadr proclaimed a ceasefire last August and extended it indefinitely last month. But the firebrand cleric, who led two uprisings against US-led forces in 2004, has authorized his followers to defend themselves if attacked.

Al-Sadr's supporters have complained that the Shiite-led government has used the ceasefire to accelerate a crackdown against their movement in Baghdad and the Shiite heartland south of the capital.

Iraqi security forces are heavily influenced by a rival Shiite group, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which wields considerable power in the central government.

Rival Shiite groups have been battling for control of the oil-rich south with an eye toward the eventual withdrawal of US-led forces.

A Sadrist member of parliament alleged that the crackdown in Kut and elsewhere in the south was part of a move by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party and the supreme council to prevent al-Sadr's followers from winning control of key southern provinces in provincial elections expected this fall.

"They have no supporters in the central and southern provinces, but we do," Ahmed al-Massoudi said. "If the crackdown against the Sadrists continues, we will begin consultations with other parliamentary blocs to bring down the government and replace it with a genuinely national one."

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