By Xinhua,
Baghdad : U.S. soldiers killed nine gunmen in two incidents in Baghdad eastern neighborhood of Sadr City, the U.S. military said on Thursday.
U.S. soldiers killed five gunmen Wednesday while they were loading multiple rockets onto a launch sled, a military statement said.
Shortly after the first incident, U.S. soldiers killed another gunman who was trying to recover the rockets, it said.
Afterwards, a U.S. drone fired a Hellfire missile and destroyed the rockets and the sled, it added.
An hour later, the soldiers repelled an insurgents’ attack with rocket-propelled grenades , killing three gunmen, the military said.
An Iraqi police source told Xinhua that at least eight people were killed, including women and children, in Hay Tariq area in Sadr City district during overnight clashes between the Shiite Mahdi Army militia, loyal to firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and U.S. troops.
Over 900 people were killed and more than 2,600 others were wounded in the clashes that flared up nearly everyday in Sadr City from late March when a U.S. and Iraqi military crackdown sparked an uprising by Sadr’s Mahdi Army militiamen.