Baghdad, Iraq – Fighting erupted early today in a Shiite militia stronghold of Baghdad, and a suicide bomber blew himself up among mourners at a funeral in Saddam Hussein’s hometown, killing 10 people and injuring 22.
Three U.S. soldiers were killed late Sunday in a roadside bombing southwest of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. No further details were released.
In Baghdad, sounds of heavy gunfire and explosions rattled the Sadr City district early today. Iraqi government television and aides to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said U.S. aircraft were attacking buildings in the area.
“Several aerial and ground raids began in central Sadr City,” al-Sadr aide Jaleel al- Nouri said by telephone as detonations could be heard in the background. “We can see several houses on fire.”
Kadhim al-Mohammedawi, a civil servant who lives in Sadr City, said by telephone, “There’s gunfire from all sides. We can hear women and children screaming.”
Col. Hassan Chaloub, police chief of Sadr City, said U.S. jets were flying over the city and at least three houses were ablaze. He said calls of “God is great” and “There’s no God but God” were blasting from loudspeakers in area mosques.
There was no comment from the U.S. military, which has reinforced its troop strength in the city to try to reclaim the streets from militias, including al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
Late Sunday, scattered clashes broke out between Shiite militiamen and Iraqi soldiers near Hamza Square on the edge of Sadr City, police said. Two militiamen were killed and five combatants were wounded, including two Iraqi soldiers, police said.
About the same time, gunmen ambushed a police patrol in south Baghdad, killing two policemen and wounding five others, police said.
The attack on the mourners occurred in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. The bomber mingled among the crowd in a funeral hall and detonated an explosive belt, police said.
Police Capt. Laith Hamid, who gave the casualty figure, said the mourners were attending services for the father of a local council member, who was killed in the attack.
Other developments
A year after her first war protest in President Bush’s adopted hometown attracted thousands and reinvigorated the nation’s peace movement, Cindy Sheehan resumed her vigil Sunday in Crawford, Texas.
Sheehan and more than 50 protesters again marched toward Bush’s ranch, stopping at a roadblock. As Secret Service agents stood by, Sheehan held up her California driver’s license and said she wanted to meet with the president. “It doesn’t say my new address, but I do live here now,” said Sheehan, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., and recently bought land in Crawford. “My name is Cindy, and Bush killed my son.”
White House spokesman Tony Snow has said neither Bush nor his staff plan to meet with Sheehan.
An Iraqi medic who responded March 12 to a Baghdad home where U.S. soldiers allegedly raped and killed a teenage Iraqi girl and murdered her sister and parents described Sunday a horrific display of carnage.
In the opening day of testimony in the military hearing in Baghdad to determine if there is enough evidence to hold a court-martial for five U.S. soldiers, the medic testified that he found the 14-year-old girl dead, her clothes torn off, her body burned, a single bullet hole under her left eye.
Defense attorneys questioned the medic’s medical training.
