By Xinhua
Baghdad : At least 10 people were killed and some 80 others injured during the clashes between Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia and the U.S.-backed Iraqi troops Wednesday in Baghdad, a police source and witnesses said.
After midnight, Mahdi Army fighters started fierce clashes with Iraqi and U.S. forces in their Sadr City Shiite bastion in eastern Baghdad and continued sporadically during the day, the police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
“Until early in the morning, the clashes resulted in the killing of 10 people and the wounding of 80 others,” the source said citing medical reports.
The sprawling Shiite stronghold of Mahdi Army militia, loyal to hardline Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has been under curfew, the source said.
U.S. and Iraqi troops had surrounded the heavily populated and impoverished neighborhood, and armed Shiite fighters were patrolling the streets, witnesses said.
Elsewhere in Baghdad, Mahdi Army fought overnight with U.S. and Iraqi forces in other two Shiite neighborhoods, according to witnesses, who could not tell whether there were any casualty. In the al-Amil neighborhood, in southwestern of the capital,Mahdi Army militia battled U.S. troops with rocket-propelled grenades, machine-guns and roadside bombs, witnesses said. Another battle broke out in the nearby al-Risala neighborhood between Mahdi Army and Iraqi police, they said.The clashes came a day after Sadr’s top aide warned that Sadr would launch protests and nationwide civil disobedience if attacks against his followers are not halted.
“We call on all Iraqis to stage sit-ins in all over the country as a first step, so if the government would not respect our people’s demands, the second step would be civil disobedience in Baghdadand all other provinces,” Sadr said in a statement read out by senior aide Hazim al-Araji.
Fighting raged from early Tuesday in areas of Basra controlled by the Mahdi Army as troops and police launched a major crackdown on armed groups in the oil hub. The skirmishes spread later to some other Iraqi cities, including Baghdad.