US troops raid Shiite district of Baghdad

US troops raided a Shiite area of Baghdad today, capturing two militants believed linked to Iran and sparking a battle that Iraqi officials said killed 19 people.

Two employees of the Reuters news agency, an Iraqi photographer and his driver, were among the dead.

Angry residents of Amin district – many of them Shiites who fled to Baghdad from Baqouba, where US troops are waging an offensive against insurgents - accused US helicopters of striking buildings during the fight with gunmen and killing civilians.

The US military did not immediately comment on the fighting.

Among the dead were at least one woman and two children, and some of the men slain appeared to have been armed and firing on the Americans, Iraqi police and hospital officials said.

US forces have been waging an intensified security crackdown against Shiite and Sunni militants in and around Baghdad for nearly a month, as the Iraqi government struggles to make political progress.

Disputes between Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders have severely weakened Prime Minister Nouri Maliki even as the US presses him to enact reforms.

One of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite politicians, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, underlined his support of Maliki in comments given to The Associated Press today, saying his party – the biggest in parliament – was working with Maliki on a government reshuffle that would strengthen the prime minister.

The violence in the Amin district in eastern Baghdad began with a pre-dawn raid by US forces that the military said captured two militants involved in kidnappings and planting roadside bombs against US and Iraqi troops. Militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the troops, hitting a nearby building, the military said in a statement.

The militants belonged to Iranian-backed “special groups” linked to the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to anti-US Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The US has accused Iran’s Revolutionary Guards of organising and arming a network of the special groups to carry out attacks on US and Iraqi forces and kidnappings.

After the initial raid, US troops surrounded the neighbourhood for several hours, announcing with loudspeakers to residents that they were seeking militants and that they should stay inside, said an Iraqi police official who was at the scene.

As the Americans withdrew around 11am, they came under fire, prompting troops to move back into the district, assaulting several buildings, the official said.

A US attack helicopter struck targets on the ground, he said.

The result was a battle with militants that included mortars and rockets, the official said.

Several explosions hit residential buildings, killing eight people, including a woman and two children, said the official and another police officer involved in counting the casualties. They could not say whether the blasts came from the helicopter or from militants.

Eleven others – mostly men, including some suspected gunmen – were killed on the street near buildings, shops and a husseiniyah – a Shiite religious building - the officials said. AP Television News footage showed buildings riddled with holes from heavy machine gun and rocket fire, and a minibus with its front seat blasted away.

Officials from the three hospitals where the victims were taken put the toll at 19 dead and 20 wounded. Among the dead were an Iraqi photographer for Reuters, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and a driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, the London-based news agency said “The cause of their deaths was unclear, although witnesses spoke of an explosion in the area,” Reuters reported. “Iraqi police said either a US air strike or a mortar attack had occurred.”

The US military reported on the initial raid but not on the later fighting. The Associated Press asked the US by e-mail for comment but was told only that reports were still coming in.

Residents blamed the Americans for the destruction.

“We are refugees, we were displaced from our homes by militant attacks,” said one woman, who like others had come to the neighbourhood from Baqouba. “And now we have to deal with attacks from Americans.”

“They hit the building and destroyed it completely. My mother is dead, my sister is dead I don’t know where my father is,” said the woman, who refused to identify herself, speaking in front of a residential building where the ground floor of shops was gutted.

US strikes in Shiite districts are highly sensitive for al-Maliki, whose bedrock support is from the majority Shiite community. Shiites have complained of casualties in US raids launched in retaliation for the frequent mortar attacks on Baghdad’s government district, the Green Zone, often blamed on the Mahdi Army. The US military says it tries to avoid civilian casualties but that militants hide in populated areas.

Earlier this month, Maliki chided the US for a raid in the Baghdad Shiite stronghold of Sadr City. But he has not moved to rein in American operations as he has in the past – having promised Washington to allow troops to go after both Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents.

In southern Iraq, clashes erupted between Shiite militants and the Iraqi army, killing a soldier and a civilian in the city of Diwaniyah, police said. The US military said today that American-Iraqi sweeps in the city over the previous two days had killed eight suspected insurgents.

A suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt by a wedding party in Tal Afar, a city 260 miles north-west of Baghdad that has seen frequent attacks by Sunni insurgents.

A police officer in Tal Afar said five people were killed and five wounded, though the bride and groom escaped injury. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk to the press.

Frustration with Maliki is growing in Washington as the Bush administration tries to fend off a strengthening push in Congress for a US troop withdrawal from Iraq. Several Republican backers of the US strategy in Iraq have jumped ship and called for a change, pointing to the government’s failure to enact political reforms demanding by Washington.

Maliki’s government is deadlocked by a Sunni Arab boycott of his Cabinet and the parliament and Kurdish opposition to an oil law that is one of the reforms. Shiite Cabinet members and lawmakers loyal to al-Sadr have also suspended participation in government.

For months, Maliki has been speaking of a Cabinet reshuffle to streamline his fragile government to a core of parties to push through log-jammed legislation. But so far, a new Cabinet has not emerged. Rumours have been circulating of an attempt to remove Maliki with a vote of no confidence, though Sunnis have denied any plans.

Al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Islamic Council, assured that his support remained behind Maliki and promised efforts to resolve the differences with the Sunnis. Al-Hakim is in Iran undergoing treatment for cancer, taking a key political player out of the country at a crucial time.

“Work is going on to back the prime minister and to strengthen the government and stand by its side ... and work so that the government be more powerful than it is today,” he told the AP in a written response to questions submitted last week.

Of the Sunnis, he said, “We will work as we did in the past and continue to keep them with us and participate together in the rule and serving the Iraqi people. If there are problems, then there should be serious efforts to solve them.”