Pre-dawn raid launched on Sadr City
At least six people are wounded and several houses destroyed in raid on Sadr City.
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One resident, Abu Hammad, said: “We were sleeping and we heard aircraft, both helicopters and planes, flying over us very low and there was lots of shooting so we lay down on the ground.”
The raid appeared to be part of a series targeting members of the Mahdi Army headed by Muqtada al-Sadr, a populist Shia cleric. The fighters have been implicated in sectarian attacks on Sunnis.
The US military could not be reached for comment.
‘Triangle of death’
A day earlier, south of the capital, in the so-called “triangle of death”, a bomb exploded in the town of Iskandiriya, wounding 10 people.
Police Lieutenant Karim al-Wael said two of the casualties were in a serious condition.
Late on Saturday, Captain Salam Zankana, of the Kirkuk police, said that three mortar shells crashed down on a southern neighbourhood of the northern oil city killing one woman and wounding four others, among them a child.
US and Iraqi forces are carrying out raids in the town of Yathrib, in the Sunni province of Salah al-Din, after the assassination on Saturday of Jabbar al-Tamimi, a police Colonel.
“Al-Tamimi was visiting a water purification project in the al-Bujaili district in Yathrib when he was attacked by gunmen and riddled with bullets,” a police officer, who requested anonymity, said.
Ten suspects have been arrested, he said.