Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr issued a “final warning” to the Iraqi government to halt the US-Iraqi crackdown against his followers or he would declare “open war until liberation”.

Twelve people died in overnight clashes in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, which has become a chief battleground between US and Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, police and hospital officials said today.

Four British soldiers and a Kuwaiti interpreter were killed today in an ambush in southern Iraq, the military said.