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40 killed in fresh Iraq violence

* Clashes in Kufa, Basra, Karbala
* 7 killed in Baghdad market bombing

BAGHDAD Clashes between coalition forces and Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army left 30 people dead across Iraq on Sunday. Ten more died in other violence.

The US military killed 19 militiamen in Baghdad. Eighteen were killed in one clash when US troops moved in after militiamen began setting up checkpoints in Sadr City, the military said.

The clashes came after six men were arrested in a US raid on one of the cleric’s offices in Sadr City. They included Sayed Amer al-Husseini, apparently responsible for eastern Baghdad operations, and Amjed al-Swedi, a Sadr financier. An AFP correspondent said one Sadr supporter was killed and another wounded during the raid.

Militiamen were also involved in violence in the central southern cities of Diwaniyah, Karbala, Najaf and Kufa. In Kufa on Sunday, four Iraqis were killed and 12 others injured, including four children, in fresh fighting, according to hospital sources. Two Iraqis were killed in gun battles between the Mehdi Army and US-led forces in Karbala, medical sources told AFP. Two others were seriously wounded in about three hours of fighting that broke out in the afternoon near the Al-Mokhayam mosque, close to a Sadr office.

Four civilians were killed and a fifth was wounded when British troops responded to mortar fire from Mehdi Army militiamen in Amarah early on Sunday, police and medical sources said.

Seven people, including a four-year-old boy and two police officers, were killed as police tried to defuse a bomb in a crowded Baghdad market, according to witnesses and hospital sources. Another eight people were wounded.

One other policeman was killed in a roof-top attack on a patrol by four black-clad militiamen, while a senior police official was assassinated in Baquba, 65 kilometres northeast of Baghdad.

The US military reported that one of its soldiers was killed and another wounded on Saturday in a mortar attack on the coalition base in Mosul. An oil pipeline supplying Basra caught fire on Sunday after a suspected sabotage attack, said firemen.

The new provincial governor for Najaf will join tribal and religious leaders from the city to try to form a delegation to meet with Sadr, a senior police officer told AFP on Sunday. —Agencies

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