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WORLD / America

5 American soldiers killed near Baghdad

(AP)
Updated: 2007-08-12 19:37

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Iraqi women look through a bullet-riddled windshield after an overnight
raid by U.S. troops in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq
on Sunday, Aug. 12, 2007. [AP]

BAGHDAD - Five American soldiers were killed south of Baghdad, including
four in a single roadside bombing, the military said Sunday.

The blast that killed the four soldiers and wounded four others occurred
Saturday during combat operations south of the capital, the military
said. Another soldier was killed Saturday by small-arms fire during a
foot patrol southeast of Baghdad.

All the soldiers were assigned to Task Force Marne, which operates in an
area with a volatile mix of Sunni and Shiite extremists.

The troops also have been cracking down on networks allegedly smuggling
explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, from Iran to the Baghdad area.
The precision-crafted explosives have become a growing threat to American
troops, and the Pentagon has struggled to find ways to protect vehicles
against their deadly power.

The deaths announced Sunday raised to at least 3,690 members of the U.S.
military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to
an Associated Press count.

U.S. and Iraqi forces elsewhere reportedly staged raids in a Shiite
stronghold in Baghdad and the holy city of Kufa.

A police officer said two civilians were killed and four wounded when the
joint forces backed by helicopters stormed into houses in Baghdad's
Shiite district of Sadr City.

The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't
authorized to release the information, also said 16 people were detained.
The U.S. military said it was looking into the report.

AP Television News footage and photos showed a crumpled white car and a
truck pockmarked by shrapnel, with a pool of blood on the street. Dozens
of men carried a black coffin in a funeral service for one of the
purported victims.

Joint U.S.-Iraqi forces backed by air power also raided the house of an
aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the holy city of Kufa,
100 miles south of Baghdad, according to al-Sadr's office.

The U.S. military had no immediate word on that report either. Sheik
Fouad al-Turfi was detained, according to an official and a relative who
declined to be identified because he feared retribution.

U.S.-led forces have routinely carried out raids searching for Shiite
militants since they launched a Baghdad security crackdown nearly six
months ago. On Wednesday, U.S. aircraft and soldiers attacked Shiite
militia bomb makers accused of links to Iran, killing 32 suspected
militants and detaining 12 others.

The raids have sent a strong message that U.S. forces plan no letup on
suspected Shiite militia cells despite risks of upsetting the Shiite-led
government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and its efforts at closer
cooperation with Shiite heavyweight Iran.

Al-Qaida-linked Sunni extremists, meanwhile, praised the attack on a
moderate Sunni cleric who had recently spoken out against the terror
network. Sheik Wathiq al-Obeidi was seriously wounded and three relatives
were killed.

A Sunni insurgent umbrella group threatened al-Obeidi on Tuesday, calling
him a traitor and accusing him of working with the U.S.-backed alliance
of Sunni tribal leaders, who are fighting al-Qaida in western Iraq.

Followers denied the cleric was linked to the alliance in Anbar province,
but he issued his own call against al-Qaida last week during a funeral
prayer for two nephews believed killed by extremists.

The al-Qaida front group the Islamic State of Iraq did not officially
claim the attack, but Web sites it generally uses to put out messages
said it had been carried out by its militants.

Al-Obeidi was one of two Sunni leaders who took public stances against
al-Qaida in Iraq to be attacked Saturday, in a sign the terror network
may ramp up retaliation against local chiefs who oppose it.

A local tribal leader in Albu Khalifa, a village west of Baghdad, was
gunned down by militants who broke into his home late Saturday, police
said.

Sheik Fawaq Sadda' al-Khalifawi had recently joined the anti-al-Qaida
alliance in Anbar, said a police officer in the town of Karmah, 50 miles
west of Baghdad. The police officer declined to be identified for fear of
more reprisals.

The United States has pointed to an anti-al-Qaida alliance of local Sunni
leaders as a sign of turnaround, but the attacks showed the high risks
local leaders face by joining.

A powerful roadside bomb also killed the governor and police chief of a
southern province that has been torn by fierce fighting between Shiite
factions. Al-Maliki ordered an investigation and urged residents to show
restraint and not launch reprisals.

The attack occurred in Qadisiyah province, 80 miles south of Baghdad, on
Saturday as the two officials traveled back to the provincial capital of
Diwaniyah from a funeral. Their driver and a bodyguard also were killed.

Diwaniyah has been the site of heavy clashes between U.S.-Iraqi security
forces and Shiite militia fighters. The area also has seen a rise in
internal rivalries between militia forces. Authorities imposed an
indefinite curfew after the deaths.

The governor was a member of the influential Supreme Islamic Iraqi
Council, a group led by Shiite politician Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. His
loyalists dominate the police and have engaged in fierce fighting with
the Shiite Mahdi Army for control of the oil-rich south.

In other violence, gunmen ambushed a police patrol southwest of the
northern city of Kirkuk, killing three officers and wounding another,
police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir said.

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