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5 dead, 15 injured in Iraq in police-Shia militia clash

* Rocket barrage targeted at US consulate rocks residential area
* UN official in Iraq says sectarian bloodshed ‘much lower’ than before

BAGHDAD: Iraqi security forces clashed with a breakaway faction of Shia cleric Muqtada Al Sadr’s Mahdi Army on Saturday, leaving five dead and 15 injured in the latest violence to sweep the country, AP quoted police as saying.

The fighting between the gunmen and police in Kut, about 160 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, has lasted for several days. The US military on Saturday also said that a suicide bomber had detonated an explosive vest a day earlier at a checkpoint near the Syrian border, killing an interpreter and wounding six others, including two coalition soldiers.

That attack followed a suicide car bombing on Thursday of an Iraqi army checkpoint in Tikrit, 130 kilometres north of Baghdad. One Iraqi soldier was killed and nine wounded in that blast, the Iraqi military said. No other details for either bombing were immediately available. Also on Saturday, a street sweeper was killed and eight people were injured when a roadside bomb hidden in a rubbish bin exploded in Baghdad’s central Karradah neighborhood, police said.

Rocket barrage: Elsewhere, a barrage of 25 Katyusha rockets aimed at the US consulate in the central Iraqi city of Hilla slammed instead into a residential area, killing a woman, AFP quoted police as saying. “The rockets were aimed at the American consulate but missed and hit a number of houses instead,” said Hilla police chief Major General Fadhel Raddad. “A woman was killed and nine people were wounded. Fifteen houses were damaged.”

Low violence: Also on Saturday, a top UN official in Iraq said the sectarian bloodshed, which has ravaged Iraq since 2006, was now running at a “much lower” level, offering a chance for leaders to push for national reconciliation.

Staffan de Mistura, special representative in Iraq of the UN secretary general, said the country was no longer experiencing the high levels of communal bloodletting that followed an attack on a revered Shia shrine in February 2006, despite “some horrific acts in the past few weeks.” De Mistura acknowledged a spike in violence over the past few weeks but asserted that none of this was of an “intra-sectarian nature”.

“The (sectarian) violence is much lower. There is no question about it,” he told reporters as he presented the latest UN report on the state of human rights in Iraq for the period July 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007. He added that one of the key reasons for the overall drop in violence had been general fatigue regarding sectarian violence among the people. De Mistura said the controversial US military “surge” had also helped to reduce the violence and said the overall fall in bloodshed was an opportunity for Iraqi leaders to push ahead with national reconciliation. agencies

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