More than 3,000 US paratroopers have landed in Baghdad to help quell raging sectarian violence, the military announced yesterday, after US losses surged with 19 troops killed in a helicopter crash, a gunbattle and bomb attacks.
On the political front, lawmakers who back radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said they were ending a nearly two-month-old parliamentary boycott, a move that could help shore up beleaguered Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.
Saturday's total US death toll of 19 was one of the highest since US-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and underscored the scale of the task faced by troops sent to reinforce Baghdad in a make-or-break bid to quell sectarian bloodshed.
As a new spearhead brigade of US troops began to deploy in the capital, five US soldiers were killed in a gunbattle in the shrine city of Karbala, where the Shiite mourning period of Ashura began yesterday.
In the deadliest incident involving US troops in recent months, a Blackhawk helicopter crashed on Saturday northeast of Baghdad, killing all 12 personnel on board, the military said, lowering its initial count of 13.
It was one of the worst chopper accidents since the invasion that toppled the regime of late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
The bloodshed came amid a heightened US and Iraqi crackdown on Shiite militias blamed for much of the sectarian violence that has gripped Iraq, and particularly Baghdad, since last February.
The military said the 3,200 paratroopers, in Baghdad as part of the new security plan announced by US President George W. Bush, will be fully operational on or about Feb. 1.
"The effort represents the first of several planned troop movements that will assist Iraqi security forces in reducing violence and protecting Iraqi citizens," it said.
In Karbala, five soldiers were killed and three wounded in a firefight that erupted on Saturday at a center where Iraqi security forces, civilian officials and coalition forces were meeting to discuss security for the Ashura ceremony.
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