US says fighting killed 30 Shi’ite militia

US and Iraqi forces clashed with Shi’ite militiamen yesterday in the southern city of Diwaniyah after a raid on the home of a leader of the Mahdi Army, which is accused of killing Sunnis.

The US military said 30 militiamen were killed in the fighting, about two months after a similar battle in the predominantly Shi’ite city, 80 miles south of Baghdad. Officials from the party of radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which heads the militia, denied any of their fighters were killed.

A US Abrams tank was seriously damaged when it was hit by rocket-propelled grenades, but no casualties were reported among the US or Iraqi forces.

US troops have stepped up pressure on the Mahdi Army in past weeks, with raids on the militia’s members and leaders in Baghdad and elsewhere as part of an intensified sweep aimed at reducing mounting bloodshed in the capital.

The US command also announced the deaths of two more soldiers, both killed on Saturday. One died when insurgents attacked his patrol north-west 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 this month — at least 16 in Baghdad in the district-by-district crackdown.

At least 13 other violent deaths were reported nationwide, including a Shi’ite woman and her young daughter killed yesterday when gunmen fired on their minivan in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad.

Police also found 51 bullet-riddled bodies around Baghdad during a 24-hour period ending Sunday morning, police Lieutenant Mohammed Khayoun said, all apparent victims of sectarian death squads that roam the capital.

The US has shown increasing impatience with the failure of Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to rein in militias fuelling the Shi’ite-Sunni killings.