By Xinhua
Baghdad : U.S. airstrikes in Baghdad’s Sadr City district and in the southern city of Basra killed at least 12suspected insurgents on Friday, the U.S. military and coalition spokesman said.
An unmanned aerial vehicle fired a hellfire missile and killed six “criminals with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and a mortar tube” late Thursday in Sadr City, according to a military statement.
Sadr City is the main stronghold of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The militia have been fighting the Iraqi troops supported by the U.S. military on the streets in this sprawling district of 2.5 million people.
Iraqi officials with the Interior Ministry claimed that at least 70 people have been killed and dozens wounded after the clashed erupted last Sunday.
Meanwhile, a coalition military spokesman said six other insurgents were killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq’s southern portcity of Basra.
“We think that six insurgents have been killed by the airstrike which shelled insurgents who were launching mortar rounds on an Iraqi army headquarters in the Haiyyania neighborhood in western Basra,” Captain Ford told Xinhua in Basra.
Late March, fierce clashes between Shiite Mahdi Army militia and U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces raged the main cities in the Shiite south, as Iraqi security forces launched a massive offensive, dubbed “Operation Cavalry Assault” aimed at cracking down militias in Basra, some 550 km south of Baghdad.
The clashes eased after Sadr called on his fighters off the streets, but continued sporadically in Basra and Baghdad, especially in the militia’s Baghdad stronghold of Sadr city and Shura neighborhood.
As the fightings died down, 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.
However, tension still runs high between the Sadrists and PM Nouri al-Maliki’s government. Maliki recently warned that al-Sadr must disband the Mahdi Army or will be barred from the political process and the upcoming provincial elections.
Sadrist movement accused Maliki’s government is imposing “political liquidation” and threatened to lift the ceasefire on theMahdi Army first ordered by Sadr last August, if the security forces continued to attack Sadrist followers and failed to set a timetable for US troops withdrawal.