Falluja takes more US hits

At least four people have been killed in the latest US onslaught on the Iraqi town of Falluja overnight.

Women and children are often victims of the US assaults

Ten others were injured on Tuesday as US warplanes again bombed Falluja, targeting the area of al-Askari and the industrial neighbourhoods near the main highway east of the city, Iraqi journalist Husain al-Shammari told Aljazeera.

The US military said it had “conducted a precision strike”, destroying a building believed to be the hideout for followers of al-Qaida-linked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The army has been at pains to discredit consistent reports from doctors and residents that women and children have been killed or wounded in repeated air strikes on Falluja in the recent weeks.

On Saturday, at least 15 people were killed and 25 wounded in a US strike on the city.

Sadr City assault

Five people were killed and 46 wounded in Sadr City on Monday
Five people were killed and 46 wounded in Sadr City on Monday

Five people were killed and 46
wounded in Sadr City on Monday

Meanwhile, fresh strikes have been launched on the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City overnight. On Monday, up to five people were killed and 46 wounded when US warplanes bombed parts of the suburb.
 
The strikes have caused a power outage across the slum.

Earlier on Tuesday, a roadside bomb exploded on a main Baghdad thoroughfare, wounding three civilians, the Interior Ministry said.
 
The blast on Karrada street also damaged several vehicles and shattered windows, witnesses said. The target of the attack was not immediately clear.

Clashes

Baghdad's Haifa street has seenseveral clashes and blasts
Baghdad’s Haifa street has seenseveral clashes and blasts

Baghdad’s Haifa street has seen
several clashes and blasts

American troops have cordoned off the area.

Interior Ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan Abd Al-Rahman said three civilians were wounded.

Later on Tuesday, American troops and armed fighters clashed along central Baghdad’s Haifa Street, an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said, and half a dozen explosions rocked the city. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Haifa Street has been the scene of bloody car bomb attacks, raids and fierce firefights.

British troops killed

In the southern city of Basra, a British military convoy came under attack, leaving two soldiers dead, a spokesman for the British army in Iraq said.

The first vehicle in a convoy of two armoured Land Rovers was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade on Tuesday, he said. As soldiers from the second vehicle were trying to rescue those hit they came under attack from small arms fire.

The two soldiers in the first vehicle later died in hospital, the army spokesman said.

The deaths bring the tally of British soldiers killed in combat in Iraq to 25.

Hospital officials in Basra said at least two Iraqi bystanders were also injured in the attack.

Source: Al Jazeera, News Agencies