Coalition demonstrates power as clashes kill 12 in Iraq

Twelve people died in overnight clashes in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, which has become a chief battleground between US and Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, police and hospital officials said today.

Iraqi troops also kept up the pressure on Shiite militants in the southern city of Basra, where British artillery fired a barrage of shells in a show of force in support of Iraqi government forces.

In Sadr City’s general hospital, officials said 71 people were admitted for treatment of injuries received in the fighting. The hospital also received 12 bodies, said an official.

The fighting came amid reports that Iraqi troops backed up by US forces were trying to recapture a position in the district abandoned a day ago by a company of government soldiers.

Security forces in the area also have come under repeated attack by militants trying to prevent the construction of a concrete wall through the district.

The wall – a concrete barrier of varying height up to about 12 feet – is being built along a main street dividing the southern portion of Sadr City from the northern, where Mahdi Army fighters are concentrated.

American commanders hope that construction of the Sadr City wall, which began on Tuesday, will hamper their ability to fire rockets and mortars at the Green Zone, the central Baghdad district where government offices and the US Embassy are located.

The zone has been regularly shelled since the Iraqi military launched an operation against Shiite militias in Basra on March 25. That operation quickly stalled amid fierce resistance from the militants and mass desertions from the security forces.

Militants have used mortars and rockets of various calibre in attacks on the Green Zone.

The US military said one of its attack helicopters located and hit a mortar crew in Sadr City early this morning, killing two gunmen and destroying the weapon.

The near-daily clashes in Sadr City since then have fuelled worries over a total breakdown of a truce called last year by Muqtada al-Sadr, with fears of wider violence.

The government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki also kept up the pressure on al-Sadr’s followers in Basra, launching an operation early today aimed at clearing militants from the Hayaniyah district, a Mahdi Army stronghold in Iraq’s oil capital.

British artillery and US warplanes were supporting the Iraqi army operation, which met minimal resistance, military spokesman Major Tom Holloway said.

He said that as a show of force British gunners fired a barrage of shells into an empty area near Hayaniyah and US warplanes bombed it.

“This was intended to demonstrate the firepower available to the Iraqi forces,” Major Holloway said.

Clashes were also reported near Nasiriyah, a city about 200 miles south-east of Baghdad. Authorities imposed a curfew on the town of Suq al-Shiyoukh after a firefight in which one militant was killed and six policemen injured.

Meanwhile, the US military said an American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol in Salahuddin province. The statement raised to at least 4,038 members of the US military who have died since the war started in March 2003 according to an Associated Press count.

Elsewhere in Iraq, at least five people died and 18 were injured in separate roadside bombings in the northern city of Mosul and the north-western town of Kirkuk.

The attacks capped a violent week that has raised concerns that suspected Sunni insurgents are regrouping. US and Iraqi troops have stepped up security operations in Mosul, believed to be one of the last urban strongholds of al Qaida in Iraq.