Pinpoint raids on sensitive Shia stronghold

US and Iraqi forces staged raids in Baghdad’s main Shiite militant stronghold today as part of politically-sensitive forays into areas loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Troops have held back on broad sweeps through the teeming Sadr City slums since a major security operation began earlier this month targeting militant factions and sectarian death squads that have ruled Baghdad’s streets.

Al-Sadr withdrew his powerful Mahdi Army militia from checkpoints and bases under intense government pressure to let the neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood security sweeps move ahead.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and others have opposed extensive US-led patrols through Sadr City, fearing a violent backlash could derail the security effort.

The pre-dawn raids appeared to highlight a strategy of pinpoint strikes in Sadr City rather than the flood of soldiers sent into some Sunni districts.

At least 16 people were arrested after US-Iraqi commandos, using concussion grenades, stormed six homes, police said. The US military had no immediate details of the operation.

In central Baghdad, a bomb-rigged car exploded in a car park, killing at least two people, police said. Battles and violence also raged in other parts of Iraq.

In the Wassit province, south-east of Baghdad, Iraqi forces engaged in intense fighting with suspected Sunni insurgents along a key highway, police said. Near the northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber struck a factory, killing at least four people.

Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, have arrested a suspect in the attempted assassination of Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, an aide said.

The aide said the arrest was made after reviewing security-camera video from yesterday’s blast, which ripped through an awards ceremony at the ministry of public works and killed at least 10 people. Abdul-Mahdi received leg injuries and was treated in hospital.

The aide declined to give any further details about the arrest or the suspect.

“Investigations are being done to figure out how the attack was planned,” Abdul-Mahdi told Furat television. Abdul-Mahdi is one of two vice-presidents. The other, Tariq al-Hashemi, is Sunni.

Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, remained in a Jordan hospital.

Mr Talabani, from Iraq’s Kurdish north, was taken to Amman after falling unconscious on Sunday. He regained consciousness and his aides blamed the episode on fatigue and exhaustion.

His private physician, Dr Yedkar Hikmat, would give no timetable on his discharge, saying only that rumours Mr Talabani had heart problems were “categorically wrong”.