U.S. and Iraqi troops killed 13 suspected insurgents in four clashes across Baghdad on Wednesday night, the U.S. military said on Thursday.
In one attack, a U.S. helicopter fired two hellfire missiles at about 11:10 p.m. local time (2010 GMT) on gunmen attacking soldiers who were emplacing concrete barriers at a joint security station in northeastern Baghdad, killing four of the attackers, the military said in a statement.
According to the statement, one suspected insurgent was also killed at about 8:35 p.m. local time (1735 GMT) when gunmen attacked a joint U.S. and Iraqi troops checkpoint with small arms fire from a rooftop in northeastern Baghdad.
About an hour later, U.S. troops at a checkpoint killed four more insurgents in northwestern Baghdad after gunmen attacked them with rocket-propelled grenades.
Shortly before midnight, U.S. soldiers killed four more gunmen after being attacked with small arms fire in northwestern Baghdad.
The statement did not name the areas of the incidents in Baghdad, but the locations refer to Shiite dominated districts, which are strongholds of Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Witnesses and media reports said that at least four people were killed and six others were wounded when a U.S. helicopter fired a missile on a house in Sadr City neighborhood.
An Interior Ministry source could not confirm the incident, saying the Shiite neighborhood is blocked by U.S. and Iraqi Army troops.
Meanwhile, Brigadier Qaissim Atta, a spokesman of Baghdad security plan, said Thursday that the Iraqi security forces will lift the two-week old curfew in Sadr City neighborhood on Saturday.
The curfew on Baghdad came after clashes raged between U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces and Shiite militiamen in Sadr city that claimed dozens lives of Iraqis.
Sadr City is a stronghold of Sadr's Mahdi Army, who declared on August, 2007 a six-month freeze of armed activities for his militia.
Source: Xinhua
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