Baghdad slum gun battle leaves 36 dead

US forces battled rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s gunmen in a in a Baghdad slum today and the clashes left at least 36 people dead, including one American soldier.

More than 200 were wounded, US and Iraqi authorities said.

Five other American soldiers were killed in separate attacks in and around Baghdad in the first two days of the week, bringing the US death toll from the past two days to 13.

A total of 997 US service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to a count by The Associated Press based on Defence Department reports.

US tanks moved into Sadr City and armoured personnel carriers and Bradley fighting vehicles were deployed at key intersections. Ambulances with sirens wailing rushed the wounded to hospitals as plumes of black smoke rose over the mainly Shiite neighbourhood.

Warplanes flew over the sprawling suburb of more than two million, firing flares to avoid being hit by anti-aircraft missiles.

In another part of the capital, a roadside bomb targeted the Baghdad governor’s convoy, killing two people but leaving him uninjured, the Interior Ministry said. Three of Governor Ali al-Haidri’s bodyguards were also hurt.

The fighting in Sadr City erupted when militants attacked US forces carrying out routine patrols, killing one American, said army Captain Brian O’Malley.

The US soldier was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade strike.

An al-Sadr spokesman in Baghdad, Sheik Raed al-Kadhimi, blamed what he called intrusive American incursions into Sadr City and attempts to arrest the cleric’s followers.

“Our fighters have no choice but to return fire and to face the US forces and helicopters pounding our houses,” he said.

In the slum’s roads, small groups of Sadr’s Mahdi militia fighters used hammers to dig up the asphalt to plant explosives. Bands of fighters in civilian clothes – mostly in their teens and early 20s – wielded rocket-propelled grenades and trotted toward the clashes, children running in their wake.

Other fighters, rifles in hand, gathered on street corners. Roads leading to the area were blocked by the militiamen using rocks and tyres.

The renewed fighting came after a period of calm in the impoverished neighbourhood after al-Sadr called on his followers last week to observe a cease-fire and announced he was going into politics.