By KUNA,
Baghdad : American aircraft attacked gunmen in Al-Sadr city in the eastern suburbs of the capital on Saturday and a Kurdish journalist was stabbed to death in the northern city of Irbil.
The American Army said in a statement that Multi-National air force personnel staging a reconnaissance mission located two gunmen carrying a mortar in the Baghdad eastern suburb and targeted them with a single Hellfire missile. Both were killed and the mortar was destroyed.
Meanwhile, police said fighting between Iraqi government forces and Al-Mehdi Army militiamen, raging since yesterday, has claimed 10 lives and wounded 70 others.
In Ibril, police reported that the Kurdish woman journalist, Bikard Hussein, was stabbed to death at her house on Friday. Her divorcee is suspected of being the murderer.
Hussein worked for the weekly political newspaper, “Kolan,” mouthpiece of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan.
On another local front, fierce fighting broke out on Saturday between militiamen loyal to the radical Shiite cleric, Muqtada Al-Sadr, and Iraqi government forces in the southern city of Basra, witnesses said.
The armed clashes broke out after the regulars burst into Al-Hayyaniah district, a main hotbed for Al-Mehdi Army militia, led by the cleric. The operation coincided with bursts of explosions and overflights by gunship helicopters, the witnesses said.
Leaders of Al-Sadri movement has called on authorities to lift the siege on the militia’s strongholds.
In the southern Thi-Qar province, the government forces imposed yesterday a curfew while regulars surrounded several reigonal towns, police said.
The action appeared as part of a wide-scale crackdown on Al-Mehdi militia.