34 Killed, Including an American, in Sadr City Clashes
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
American forces battled insurgents loyal to a rebel cleric in a Baghdad slum today, in clashes that killed 34 people, one of them an American soldier and the others Iraqis, the military and an Iraqi Health Ministry official said.
The official, Saad al-Amili, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that 33 Iraqis had been killed and 193 wounded in the clashes in the slum, Sadr City, in the past 24 hours.
The American military said in a statement that the soldier was killed and two were wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack that took place at about 9:30 a.m., in eastern Baghdad, where Sadr City is located.
The fighting came a day after seven marines and three Iraqis were killed by a car bomb near Falluju, a Sunni stronghold 35 miles west of Baghdad.
Talks to disarm hundreds of insurgents in Sadr City loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr collapsed last month after a tentative peace pact was abruptly canceled by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
Leaders of the Mahdi Army, the rebel force led by Mr. Sadr, and two well-placed Iraqi officials said last month that Dr. Allawi backed out of an agreement calling for the disarming of the rebel force and a halt in American military operations in Sadr City.
Today, a spokesman for Mr. Sadr, Sheik Raed al-Kadhimi, said the fighting started because of what he described as intrusive American incursions into Sadr City and attempts to arrest the cleric's followers, The A.P. reported.
The American military said in a statement that its forces had come under attack in "multiple engagements" in the eastern Baghdad district, beginning just after midnight with a rocket-propelled grenade attack.
The American forces came under mortar fire, and at least three grenade attacks and nine bomb attacks, the statement said.
At about 9:30 a.m., soldiers came under attack while waiting for an explosive ordnance disposal team at the site of what they suspected as a possible explosive device, the statement said. One soldier was killed and two were wounded in that attack, it said.
American tanks moved into Sadr City and armored personnel carriers and Bradley fighting vehicles were deployed at key intersections, The A.P. said. Ambulances took the wounded to hospitals as plumes of black smoke rose into the sky, while warplanes flew over the sprawling neighborhood of more than two million, it said.
The flare-up in violence occurred after the single deadliest attack on American troops in four months. On Monday, a car bomb tore through a convoy of American and Iraqi troops near Falluja, killing seven marines and three Iraqis, It was not immediately clear whether it was a suicide attack.
The bombing took place just outside Falluja, a city that has been run by insurgents since April, when a Marine assault was called off.
The seven Marine fatalities and the death of a soldier in a roadside bomb attack late on Monday pushed the total of American military deaths to 989, according to figures compiled by the Defense Department.
Elsewhere, a week of silence over the fate of two French hostages was broken Monday when Al Jazeera, the Arab news network, reported on Monday that an Islamic militant group holding the men had demanded a ransom of $5 million; it also demanded that France declare a truce with Osama bin Laden and that France and French companies quit doing business in Iraq.
Reuters reported that the group, the Islamic Army of Iraq, had also issued a 48-hour deadline for its demands to be met.
The report dashed hopes, expressed by French officials and a more moderate Islamic religious group in Iraq on several occasions last week, that the two journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, would soon be released. Early last week, reports surfaced that the two men had been handed over to a group that favored releasing them.
The Falluja attack was the deadliest since late April, when a car bomb killed eight American troops near Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, but it was hardly an isolated incident. Mortar fire and roadside bombs torment American soldiers in areas around Falluja and the surrounding province of Anbar, where five soldiers died in an attack on Aug. 21.
That bombing also served as a reminder of the problem that the American authorities are facing in the Sunni heartland, which forms the core of the insurgency. Insurgents have wrested control not just of Falluja but also of the nearby cities of Samarra and Ramadi, where residents say Americans forces are no longer present.
Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting for this article. |
