Fresh violence kills 20 in Baghdad

AT least 20 Iraqis were killed and more than 200 wounded as fresh violence rocked Baghdad yesterday. The US army launched a fresh offensive on Baghdad’s radical Shi’ite stronghold of Sadr City overnight that killed 13 people.

And a suicide car bomb targeting recruits for the Iraqi national guard ripped through a busy shopping area in central Baghdad, killing seven people.

In northern Iraq, a US soldier was killed in an attack on a patrol in the city of Mosul while another US soldier died in a roadside bomb attack in Tikrit, the hometown of ousted president Saddam Hussein, the US military said.