Shi’ite extremists shell US embassy under cover of sandstorm

SHI’ITE extremists lobbed more rockets or mortar shells at the US protected Green Zone yesterday as American and Iraqi troops engaged militants in the most violent clashes in weeks in Baghdad.

Abrams tanks were used to repel attacks on two army checkpoints, killing 22 militants in one clash late on Sunday, the US military said yesterday. Sixteen other militants were killed on Sunday in separate fights.

The militants were apparently taking advantage of a sandstorm that blanketed the capital on Sunday, enabling them to shell the Green Zone that houses the US embassy and much of the Iraqi government on the west side of the Tigris river.

Alarms could be heard again yesterday as loudspeakers warned residents to take cover and stay away from windows.

The Green Zone has been regularly shelled since fighting broke out over a US-backed government crackdown against militias that began in late March.

The US embassy confirmed the area was hit by indirect fire, the military’s term for rocket or mortar attacks, and said there were “no reports of serious injury or deaths at this time“.

While the sandstorm eased, the militants continued to benefit from low visibility that gave cover from attack by US aircraft, which were grounded until yesterday morning.

In Sadr City itself, four Iraqi policemen were wounded when Katyusha rockets slammed into a building housing Iraqi and US forces while a mortar attack targeting US military headquarters injured three civilians in the eastern Baladiyat area, police said.

The American and Iraqi soldiers came under attack “by a large group of criminals,” the US military said in a statement.

Fifty-eight people, including five children and eight women, were injured in clashes in Sadr City since Sunday, local health officials said yesterday.

Meanwhile, a suicide attacker on a motorcycle struck a checkpoint manned by US-allied Sunni fighters in eastern Baghdad, killing at least one and wounding four other members of the awakening council, police added.

Also yesterday, gunmen killed a local commander of al-Sadr, Ali Ghalib in the southern city of Basra, police said.

The fighting has escalated as al-Sadr’s movement rejected terms set by the Iraqi government for lifting a crackdown against his Mahdi army militia.

He also has threatened to launch an “open war” against the US-led foreign troops — a move that would lift a nearly eight-month-old ceasefire and jeopardise recent security gains.

In a step to avoid a full-blown confrontation with the government, al-Sadr on Friday called for an end to Iraqi bloodshed. But the attacks against Iraqi military checkpoints on Sunday suggested that patience was running thin within the ranks of the Mahdi army.