U.S. troops killed nine militants in overnight clashes with Shiite militia in Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Monday.
A U.S. aircraft fired a missile on Sunday night at a group of militants preparing to launch rockets in Baghdad's eastern neighborhood of Sadr City, killing three militants, a military statement said.
In southeastern Baghdad, U.S. soldiers came under small-arms fire late on Sunday night, prompting the troops to call for aerial support, the statement said, adding that an aircraft fired at a building in the area, killing three militants. In early hours on Monday, a roadside bomb followed by a small-arms fire attack struck a U.S. military convoy in northeastern Baghdad.
Soldiers in a M1A2 Abrams tank fired a 120 mm round at a rooftop, where the small-arms fire came from, killing two gunmen. Another militant, observed planting a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad, was killed by a U.S. aircraft, according to the statement. Meanwhile, an Iraqi Interior Ministry source said that fierce clashes between Sadr followers and U.S. troops spread on Sunday night and Monday in Sadr City and Shula neighborhood, another stronghold of Mahdi Army militia in northwestern Baghdad.
Over 900 people were killed in more than a month of fierce clashes in Sadr City between Mahdi Army militia and U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces, since a U.S. and Iraqi military crackdown sparked an uprising by Sadr's Mahdi Army militiamen. Earlier on Monday, a police source told Xinhua that a predawn U.S. air strike hit suspected insurgent positions in Baghdad's southern neighborhood of al-Amil, killing five people and wounding eight others.
The U.S. military has no immediate comment on the air strike on the Shiite-dominated neighborhood which is also a stronghold to Mahdi Army militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Source:Xinhua
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