At least 20 Iraqis killed in Ramadi fighting

At least 20 Iraqis were killed in clashes early today in Ramadi, where US ground troops and warplanes have conducted a series of operations over recent days targeting Sunni insurgents, police and medical workers said.

Ali al-Obaidi, a medic at Ramadi Hospital, said those killed were civilians who died in shelling by US tanks in the Dhubat neighbourhood. A police spokesman said 20 people were killed, but gave no information about their identities or how they died.

The US military said it had no updated information on Ramadi clashes.

Insurgents have grown increasingly bold around Ramadi, which lies deep in the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad where tribal leaders were strong allies of former dictator Saddam Hussein.

US forces said they used air-launched weapons on Saturday to destroy a building in the city that had been booby-trapped to explode upon entry. The military said there were no reports of any civilian casualties in that attack.

In other violence, assailants killed seven passengers and wounded two others aboard a minivan ambushed today near Mandali on the Iranian border, 60 miles east of Baghdad, the Diyala provincial police spokesman’s office said.

Also in Diyala, two policemen were killed and seven wounded when their patrol was attacked at about 8.30am local time in a village just outside Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, the provincial police spokesman said.

Baghdad police spokesman Mohammed Kheyoun said six people had been killed and 14 wounded in fighting overnight between Shiite gunmen and American forces in Shula, north-west Baghdad.

Earlier, residents who said US warplanes had fired rockets at homes in the area put the death toll as high as nine. The US military has not commented on the reports.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, one person was killed and four injured when a parked car bomb detonated near a restaurant in al-Hurriyah al-Thanyah in west Baghdad, police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said.

Three insurgents were blown apart while attempting to plant a roadside bomb last night in a southern suburb of Mosul, 225 miles north-west of Baghdad, said police Brig. Abdul-Karim Ahmed Khalaf.

The US military, meanwhile, said an air strike killed three insurgents suspected of being part of a car bomb making ring in Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad.