US and Iraqi forces killed 250 gunmen in a fierce battle involving US tanks and helicopters on the outskirts of the Shia holy city of Najaf on Sunday, a senior Iraqi police officer said. The day-long battle was continuing after nightfall, Colonel Ali Nomas told Reuters, as tens of thousands of pilgrims converged on the nearby city of Kerbala for the climax of the Ashura commemorations.
A US helicopter was shot down in the fighting, Iraq security sources said. The US military declined comment. Officers in IraqÂ’s 8th Army Division and policemen said the helicopter had crashed and that the two crew members were dead.
At least 61 people were killed and scores wounded in Iraq Sunday, while police found 54 more corpses of people in Baghdad. Two car bombings killed 16 people and wounded 30 in Kirkuk, police said. Eight more people were killed and 18 wounded as a car bomb ripped through the Sadr City in Baghdad. Casualties were also reported from south of Baghdad in the Babil province where several mortar rounds killed another 10 people, a police officer said.
Five Iraqi soldiers were killed and 19 people, including policemen, were wounded in a dawn battle in the area that pitted Iraqi and US forces against the militiamen, defence and security sources said. Bodies of 54 people were recovered from the streets of Baghdad on Sunday.
In another Baghdad attack, an adviser to Industry Minister Fawzi Hariri was killed along with his daughter, driver and bodyguard in an ambush, a security source said. Gunmen raked the convoy of Adel Abdel Mohsen with automatic weapons fire in Yarmuk, western Baghdad. At least 18 more Iraqis died in other violence.
Iraqi forces, meanwhile, beefed up security south of the Iraqi capital, along the 110 kilometres of highway from Baghdad to Karbala. Three foreign suspects, including an Afghan and a Saudi, were arrested near Baghdad as they wired a car bomb to be used against Shias in Karbala, security sources said.
In Washington, meanwhile, tens of thousands of protestors told lawmakers to cut off funds for US President George Bush’s new Iraq strategy. In another development, “Chemical Ali”, a cousin of Saddam Hussein and lead defendant in the genocide trial of six former regime officials, on Sunday defended having ordered a military campaign against Iraqi Kurdish villagers in the late 1980s. |