More than 30 killed in Baghdad's Sadr City
BAGHDAD (AP) - April 29, 2008 The clashes broke out at 9:30 a.m. after U.S. troops were
attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, spokesman
Lt. Col. Steve Stover said. As the troops were leaving the area, a
vehicle was hit with two roadside bombs, Stover said.
Officials at the Imam Ali and al-Sadr general hospitals said
about 25 people had died, with several dozen wounded. The officials
who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized
to release the information, said most of the victims were
civilians.
Stover said U.S. forces targeted gunmen in the area with rockets
fired from a guided multiple-launch rocket system, which fires
high-explosive warheads weighing 200 pounds. He said 28 extremists
were killed.
"We have every right to defend ourselves," he said. "The
problem is they're using houses, rooftops and alleyways (as
cover)."
Earlier Tuesday, eight people were killed and 67 wounded in the
sprawling eastern district that is home to 2.5 million residents.
Shiite militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi forces have been locked in
increasingly violent street battles there during the past month.
A showdown between the Iraqi government and the Mahdi Army
militia - led by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr - has
increasingly drawn U.S. forces into battle.
Tuesday's attack occurred along a road on which the U.S.
military is putting up a concrete barrier to try to cut off the
militants' ability to move freely into the rest of Baghdad and
hamper their ability to fire rockets and mortars at the heavily
fortified Green Zone that houses Iraq's government and many foreign
embassies.
AP Television News footage showed children running for cover
behind blast walls amid gunshots. Men helped carry several
blood-soaked injured people onto stretchers to a local emergency
hospital. Outside the hospital, the dead were placed inside plain
wooden coffins.
Also in Baghdad, a senior government official was killed in a
roadside bombing in the north of the city.
Dhia Jodi Jaber, director general at the Ministry of Labor and
Social Affairs, was hit by a roadside bomb as he left his home on
Tuesday morning, the ministry's spokesman Abdullah al-Lami said.
Insurgents frequently target governmental officials and
institutions in a bid to disrupt the government's work.
In the southern city of Basra, where the government began its
crackdown on Shiite militias on March 25, Iraqi military commander
Lt. Gen. Mohan al-Fireji announced the discovery of a huge weapons
cache containing roadside bombs, mortar launchers and Iranian-made
weapons.
More details on the amount of weapons or how authorities knew
they were Iranian-made were not immediately available.
Meanwhile, the trial of Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein's
best-known lieutenants, opened Tuesday in Baghdad.
Aziz is one of eight defendants facing charges in a case dating
back to 1992 when the government executed 42 merchants for
war-profiteering. Others include Saddam's half brother and the
dictator's cousin known as "Chemical Ali," who faces a pending
death sentence in another case.
Aziz has denied the accusations, his Italian lawyer said in a
statement Tuesday.
Elsewhere, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a bus stop
near Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, killing one and
wounding five people, police said.
In other developments, the Iraqi defense ministry said Serbia
had agreed to write off $3 billion in Iraq's foreign debt.
Serbia's move comes after an international conference last week
in Kuwait at which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice unsuccessfully pressed Saudi Arabia and
other Gulf states to forgive Iraq's debts as a sign of support for
Iraq's government.
Iraq harbors at least $67 billion in foreign debt - the vast
majority of it owed to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab
Emirates and Qatar.
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Associated Press Writer Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this
report.