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U.S. Copters Attack Baghdad, Claim More Lives
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Iraqis
celebrate near a burning U.S. Army truck in Showla
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BAGHDAD,
April 5 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - U.S. Apache
helicopters attacked Monday, April 5, different areas in Baghdad,
killing five people and wounding dozens in an unprecedented move since
the end of the U.S.-led war to occupy the oil-rich country one year
ago, as another 4 U.S. soldiers were killed, raising to 11 the number
killed since Sunday.
In
a bid to stamp out mounting opposition to occupation among fuming
Iraqis, the occupation jet fighters sprayed fire on the office of
Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr in the western Baghdad district of
Al-Showla, Aljazeera satellite channel reported.
Up
to 16 U.S. Humvees all-terrain vehicles, backed by tanks, rolled into
Showla, witnesses said.
They
added that the fighting erupted when five trucks of U.S. soldiers and
the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) tried to enter the district and
were attacked by Sadr supporters.
Coming
under fire, the ICDC, a paramilitary force trained by the Americans,
turned on the U.S. soldiers and started to shoot at them, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Heavy
gunfire rattled the district and columns of black smoke billowed into
the sky as several U.S. tanks and military Humvees were set ablaze.
Burning
tyres and tree trunks were used to barricade the neighborhood, where
young men toting clubs and carrying light weapons patrolled the
streets.
Tension
ran high a day after pitched battles on Sunday, April 4, between
supporters of Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr and occupation troops across
the country, which left up to 52 Iraqis killed and wounded over 200
others.
The
protesters were peacefully protesting the crushing of two fellowmen by
a U.S. tank on Saturday, April 3, the arrest of Sadr’s top assistant
Sheikh Mostafa Al-Yaqoubi and a ban on Al-Hawza newspaper,
Sadr’s mouthpiece.
The
clashes dragged on Monday in Baghdad suburb Sadr city after U.S.
overseer in Iraq designated Sadr as
an “outlaw”.
A
close aide of Sadr said the Shiite leader was “proud” to be an
outlaw.
“If
Bremer means that Mr. Moqtada is an outlaw according to the U.S. laws,
then I'm proud of it,” Sadr aide Sheikh Qais Al-Khazali told AFP,
quoting Sadr after a meeting.
U.S.
troops also opened fire Monday wounding a child after a group of
children stoned soldiers deployed outside the Karama police station,
an AFP correspondent said.
Amer
Al-Hussein, a spokesman for Sadr, told AFP that the firebrand Shiite
leader had “called for a return to calm but his partisans want to
fight against the American troops”.
“We
want peace not confrontations but if the Americans enter our
neighborhood (Sadr City), there will be a fight,” Hussein said.
Four
U.S. Troops Killed
Four
U.S. troops were killed in the past 24 hours in combat in Iraq,
including one Marine and a soldier who died Monday in separate
attacks, raising to 11 the number killed since Sunday, the U.S.
military said.
“One
Marine assigned to the 1st Marine Division has been killed as a result
of enemy action in Al-Anbar province today,” the military said,
adding that a U.S. soldier also died Monday of wounds received Sunday
during the bloody clashes.
Another
seven
soldiers were killed in the same clashes in the northern
Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.
A
U.S. soldier was also killed near the northern oil center of Mosul on
Sunday in a bomb attack, while the fourth American from the 1st
Infantry Division died in a car bomb attack near the police academy of
Kirkuk, also in northern Iraq.
The
deaths took to 611 the number of U.S. troops killed since the start of
the war, according to an AFP tally.
Governor’s
Office Seized
The
uprising by Sadr's supporters also raged on elsewhere as they seized
the governor's office in the British-controlled southern port city of
Basra, an AFP correspondent on the scene said.
Dozens
of Sadr’s armed Mahdi Army militiamen stormed the governor's office
at dawn Monday, raising a green Islamic flag on the roof, he said.
British
troops traded fire with Mahdi militiamen, an AFP correspondent at the
scene said.
“One
person was hit in the shoulder and another in the head after two
British armored vehicles and the militiamen traded fire at around 3:15
pm (1115 GMT),” Ali Abu Al-Sadah, a nurse at Basra's Al-Sadr
teaching hospital, told AFP.
Sheikh
Sattar Al-Bahadli, the head of Sadr's office in Basra, told AFP that
the militants had handed over a letter with their demands to a passing
convoy of British troops.
Four
hours later British troops were no longer in the area while policemen
who had been inside the building when it was overrun were seen
deployed alongside the militiamen.
On
Sunday, other Sadr supporters took over the police station and
government buildings in Kufa, 140 kilometers (90 miles) south of
Baghdad, close to the holy city of An-Najaf, where 20 Iraqis and a
Salvadoran solider in the U.S.-led occupation force died in clashes.
Also
on Monday, Mahdi militiamen took control of two Shiite shrines in the
cities of An-Najaf and Kufa, an AFP correspondent reported.
Mahdi
Army militants in black uniforms deployed around the mausoleum of Ali,
where the son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) is
buried.
They
also surrounded a shrine in Kufa, the correspondent added.
In
an ominous development that threatens to inflame the situation, Sadr
told his supporters Sunday to “terrorize
the enemy” as demonstrations were now pointless.
Observing
a second day of sit-in at a Kufa mosque, Sadr declared jihad and urged
his followers to take up arms against the occupation, the first time
by him to opt for armed resistance since the ouster of Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein on April 9.
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