US forces battled insurgents loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City yesterday, killing at least 34 people, including one US soldier, and injuring 193, US and Iraqi authorities said.
US tanks moved into the neighborhood and armored personnel carriers and Bradley fighting vehicles were deployed at key intersections. Ambulances with sirens wailing rushed the wounded to hospitals as plumes of black smoke rose into the sky.
PHOTO: AFP
Several warplanes flew over the sprawling neighborhood of more than 2 million.
In a different part of the Iraqi capital, a roadside bomb explosion targeted the Baghdad governor's convoy, killing two people but leaving him uninjured, the Interior Ministry said. Three of Governor Ali al-Haidri's bodyguards were also hurt in the attack yesterday in the western neighborhood of Hay al-Adel.
The fighting in Sadr City erupted when militants attacked US forces carrying out routine patrols, said US Army Captain Brian O'Malley.
"We just kept coming under fire," he said.
O'Malley said the US soldier was killed by small arms fire and that several others were wounded.
A senior Health Ministry official, Saad al-Amili, said a total of 33 people have been killed and 193 injured in the Sadr City clashes in the past 24 hours.
An al-Sadr spokesman in Baghdad, Sheik Raed al-Kadhimi, blamed what he described as intrusive US incursions into Sadr City and attempts to arrest the cleric's followers for the latest flare up.
"Our fighters have no choice but to return fire and to face the US forces and helicopters pounding our houses," al-Kadhimi said in a statement.
The renewed fighting came after a period of calm in the impoverished neighborhood after al-Sadr called on his followers last week to observe a cease-fire and announced that he planned to enter politics.
But al-Sadr aides later said peace talks in Sadr City between the cleric's representatives and interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government had stalled, with the government refusing militant demands for US troops to keep out of the troubled district.
Al-Sadr led a three-week uprising in the holy city of Najaf that ended 10 days ago with a peace deal that allowed his Mahdi militia fighters to walk away with their guns. The combat in Najaf left thousands dead and devastated much of the city.
Many Mahdi militiamen are believed to have returned to their stronghold in Sadr City.
Yesterday's violence came a day after a suicide attack on a military convoy outside Fallujah killed seven US Marines and three Iraqi soldiers, US military officials said. It was the deadliest day for American forces in four months.
A group linked to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- Tawhid and Jihad -- posted a statement yesterday on a militant Web site claiming responsibility for the slayings, describing them as "a martyr operation ... that targeted American soldiers and their mercenary apostate collaborators from the Iraqi army."
The force of the blast on a dusty stretch of wasteland 15 km north of Fallujah, a hotbed of Sunni insurgents, wrecked two Humvee vehicles and hurled the suicide car's engine far from the site, witnesses said.
The bombing underscored the challenges US commanders face in securing Fallujah and surrounding Anbar province, the heartland of a Sunni Muslim insurgency bent on driving coalition forces from the country.
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