Violence continues to rage across Iraq

Iraqi and US forces raided a Shiite militia stronghold in Baghdad today, triggering a gunbattle that left three people dead, while 12 others were killed elsewhere.

The dead included five people killed in a barbershop that was sprayed with gunfire.

Ten people were killed in a suicide bombing at a funeral in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit and three US soldiers died in a roadside bomb late yesterday. No further details were released.

In Baghdad, sounds of heavy gunfire and explosions rattled the Sadr City district about 1am local time today and persisted for more than an hour. Iraqi government television and aides to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said US aircraft attacked buildings in the area.

“We condemn this cowardly, terrorist attack conducted by the US forces in Sadr City,” said Falah Shanshal, a politician aligned to al-Sadr. “We demand the government take necessary measures to stop such unjustified aggression and we demand an investigation,” he said.

The US military said in a statement the fighting started when Iraqi and US forces raided the area to catch extremists suspected of running torture cells in Sadr City.

The fighting is a serious development in a city volatile with sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunni extremists, and points to the growing strength of al-Sadr’s anti-US militia, the Mahdi Army.

President Jalal Talabani told reporters today that he has written to al-Sadr “to control those elements of the Mahdi Army” who take “illegal actions.” He said he also told Army General George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, that “it is in nobody’s interest to have confrontations with the Sadrists.”

Talabani rejected suggestions that the country was sliding toward civil war.

“Sunnis and Shiites are intermingled and their leaders are opposed (to civil war). There are clans that have both Sunni and Shiite members, how can they turn against each other?” he said.

The US. military recently reinforced its troop strength in the city to try to reclaim the streets from militias. Casey told reporters he discussed with Talabani a security plan to bring “fundamental change to the security situation in Baghdad.”

“There is a comprehensive plan to change the situation significantly prior to Ramadan,” which begins late September, he said. He did not give details.

Colonel Hassan Chaloub, police chief of Sadr City, said three people including a woman and a three-year-old girl were killed and 12 were injured in today’s fighting. He said three cars and three houses were destroyed in fire.

The suicide bombing on the funeral in Tikrit targeted mourners attending services for the father of a local council member, who was killed in the attack, said police Capt. Laith Hamid. He said 10 people were killed and 22 injured.

In other violence across the country today:

- assailants in two cars sprayed a barber shop in Baghdad with gunfire, killing the owner and four customers.

- three civilians were killed and 15 injured in crossfire during clashes in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, after insurgents attacked a joint US-Iraqi patrol.

- gunmen fired at a taxi in the northern city of Mosul, killing two policemen inside.

- two bodies, handcuffed and shot in the head, were found in western Baghdad.

- two bombs exploded almost simultaneously in a Baghdad shopping street, injuring 10 people, including a senior police officer.

Also today, police fired in the air to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators in Darbandikhan in northern Iraq, injuring at least 11 people, an official of the provincial government, Othman Haji Mahmoud, said.

The protesters were demanding better living conditions such as electricity and fuel, the second such protest in two days in the area near Sulaimaniyah city.