Baghdad, Iraq – Two American soldiers were killed Saturday in Baghdad, seven Shiite construction workers were gunned down and five Sunni civilians were blown up, deepening the capital’s security crisis.
Elsewhere, U.S. and Iraqi forces backed by a helicopter gunship launched a major attack Saturday on a headquarters of a radical Shiite militia south of Baghdad, killing 15 militiamen in a three-hour battle, the U.S. said.
One U.S. soldier died in the second of two roadside bombs that exploded in east Baghdad at midmorning. An Iraqi civilian was killed by the first blast, police said. Another U.S. soldier died Saturday evening when gunmen attacked his patrol with small-arms fire, the military said.
The seven Shiite workers were killed and two were wounded when gunmen opened fire on a construction site near Baghdad International Airport, police said. Later Saturday, a mortar shell killed five civilians at a market in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Amil in west Baghdad, police said.
Much of the violence appeared to be part of the tit-for- tat reprisal killings by Sunni and Shiite extremists that have led to a dramatic deterioration of security in the Iraqi capital.
With violence rising, the United States is moving to bolster American troop strength in the area, putting on hold plans to draw down 127,000 troops.
The security crisis in Baghdad is expected to figure prominently when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets President Bush at the White House on Tuesday. U.S. officials are expected to push al-Maliki, a Shiite, to move quickly to calm sectarian tensions and abolish Shiite militias.
But the visit comes amid rising anger among Iraqis over Israel’s attacks in Lebanon, launched after Shiite Hezbollah militiamen seized two Israeli soldiers.
On Saturday, the Fadhila party, which is part of al-Maliki’s Shiite alliance, urged the prime minister to call off his visit.
Al-Maliki has condemned Israel’s offensive and has complained that the U.S. and the rest of the international community have not done enough to stop it.
Al-Maliki said he would convey that message personally to Bush.
Also Saturday, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of the Iraqi parliament, criticized the U.S. involvement in Iraq, likening the invasion and its consequences to “the work of butchers” and demanding that U.S. authorities disentangle themselves from Iraq’s political affairs.
“We know there was a corrupt regime in Saddam, but a regime should be removed by surgery, not by butchering,” he said in a speech at a U.N.-sponsored conference on transitional justice.
