U.S. Troops Kill 30 Iraqi Militiamen
U.S. and Iraqi forces clashed with Shiite militiamen Sunday in the southern city of Diwaniyah for the second time in two months in a battle sparked by a raid on the home of a leader of the Mahdi Army, accused of killing Sunnis in Iraq's spiral of sectarian violence.
The U.S. military said 30 militiamen were killed in the fighting, in which a U.S. Abrams tank was seriously damaged when it was hammered by rocket-propelled grenades. Officials from the party of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which heads the militia denied any of their fighters were killed.
U.S. troops have been stepping up pressure on the Mahdi Army in past weeks, launching raids on their members and leaders in Baghdad and elsewhere as part of an intensified sweep in the capital aimed at reducing mounting bloodshed.
The U.S. command announced the deaths of two more soldiers, both killed Saturday. One died when insurgents attacked his patrol northwest of Baghdad, while the other was killed by a roadside bomb, the military said without specifying where the attack took place.
The deaths brought to 26 the number of Americans killed in Iraq this month — at least 16 of them in Baghdad amid the district-by-district crackdown.
At least 11 Iraqis died in other violence around the country, including a high-ranking police officer in northern Iraq and a Shiite woman and her young daughter driving in a minibus northeast of Baghdad. Baghdad police also said they found more than 50 bodies in the 24-hour period into Sunday morning — all apparent victims of the sectarian death squads that roam the capital, with many showing signs of torture.
In other developments:
Republican Rep. Jason Brown, a staff sergeant in the Army Reserve, was shot in the lung during a recent patrol, said George McClintock, a family friend. Brown, 36, began a one-year tour in Iraq in April as a civil affairs specialist. His duties include helping to build roads, bridges, hospitals and schools.
The U.S. has shown increasing impatience with the failure of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to rein in militias fueling the Shiite-Sunni killings that many believe now pose a greater threat to Iraq's stability than al Qaeda or the anti-U.S. insurgency.
Sunni leaders accuse al-Maliki of hesitating to take action against Shiite militia because many of them — like the Mahdi Army — belong to political parties on whose support his government relies.
Fighting broke out in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad after a joint U.S.-Iraqi unit raided the house of Kifah al-Greiti, a Mahdi Army commander in the city soon after midnight, Iraqi Army Capt. Fatiq Ayed said.
A fierce battle broke out, lasting through the night and into Sunday morning. Fighting could be seen in two neighborhoods and heavy explosions could be heard, eventually stopping by midmorning.
The U.S. military said up to 10 teams of militiamen with rocket propelled grenades attacked Iraqi and U.S. troops. An M1A2 Abrams tank was struck by multiple RPG rounds and was severely damaged, the military said.
In the morning, troops barricaded off entrances to the area to prevent militia reinforcements from entering. The military said 30 militiamen were killed, with no casualties among the U.S. or Iraqi forces.
The troops were targeting a "high-value target," who was involved in killing Iraqi army soldiers on Aug. 28, when they came under attack, the U.S. command said in a statement without identifying the target. It said the target was captured along with three other people.
Iraqi police Lt. Raed Jabir and Mahdi Army officials said al-Greiti was not arrested, and it was not clear who the captured target was.
"Al-Greiti is one of the American's most wanted commanders in the city," Fadhil Qasir, a spokesman for the Mahdi Army, told the AP in Diwaniyah. "They have tried to arrest him several times before and they failed this time also."
Qasir also denied that the Mahdi Army had suffered any deaths. Diyaa Ghanim, a doctor at the Diwaniyah general hospital, said as of early afternoon the facility had received no bodies.
Sheik Abdul-Razzaq al-Nadawi, the head of al-Sadr's office in Diwaniyah, said the Mahdi Army suffered no fatalities but that three were wounded and in critical condition.
He said al-Sadr's office had negotiated an arrangement with the prime minister's office that U.S. troops would not enter Mahdi Army neighborhoods in Diwaniya, and that the presence of U.S. troops overnight had provoked the clashes. "We don't attack, but when we are attacked, we respond," he said.
Following the fighting, Iraqi authorities imposed a full curfew in Diwaniyah until further notice, Jabir said.
Diwaniyah was the scene of a fierce fight in August between the Mahdi Army and Iraqi forces that left 23 Iraqi troops and 50 militiamen killed and scores more wounded.