Tires are set on fire as Iraqis block the entrance to Sadr city district of Baghdad

BAGHDAD, May 9 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – At least 30 Iraqis were killed and tens others wounded Sunday, May 9, in separate attacks, mostly involving clashes between U.S. forces and Shiite fighters.

U.S. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said a "total of 19 enemy" were killed in clashes with followers of Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr, including eighteen at the Shiite district of Sadr City, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Clashes flared up after U.S. forces seized two of Sadr's key associates, including a financier and a man responsible for eastern Baghdad operations, he told reporters.

Meanwhile, four Iraqis were killed and 12 others injured, including four children, in fresh fighting between U.S. troops and Sadr's followers in Kufa, according to hospital sources.

An AFP photographer saw three partially destroyed homes and extensive damage to the front of a kindergarten and a school near the Kufa grand mosque.

At least five U.S. tanks and seven armored Humvees were seen heading towards Kufa from a base in An-Najaf but the tanks drew back after closing to within 500 meters (yards) of the mosque.

The road from An-Najaf to Kufa was cut off from one side by U.S. troops, and from another by militiamen who fanned out in the area in large numbers.

Fighting has gone on for days between Sadr's men and the U.S.-led occupation forces in Baghdad and in southern Iraqi cities.

The U.S. announced Thursday, May 6, killing 41 Iraqis in An-Najaf, a few hours after 18 Iraqis and three American soldiers were slain in separate attacks across the country.

On April 27, the U.S. forces said they killed 43 resistance fighters near An-Najaf, but eyewitnesses and hospital sources said civilians made the bulk of those killed and wounded.

Market Attack

In another development, seven Iraqis, including two boys, were killed in a bombing at a Baghdad market Sunday.

Police had started to clear the market when a bomb hidden in a banana box exploded, killing the boys aged four and 14, according to witnesses and hospital sources.

Two police officers were among another five killed in the normally crowded vegetable market in a run-down district of western Baghdad, while another eight people were wounded.

The blast left a small crater in the road, blood on the street and destroyed some of the stalls, made simply from tarpaulin and wooden poles.

"The police picked up the box and then it exploded. The Americans have put it here because they were searching the area and they only left at 3:30 am," charged market worker Ali Hassan.

"They were the ones that did it," he said.