13 killed as fighting rages in Baghdad

0 Comments | AFP, April, 2008

BAGHDAD (AFP) — US and Iraqi forces killed 13 people in firefights and airstrikes overnight in eastern Baghdad where security forces have been battling Shiite militiamen for a week, the military said Saturday.

Among those killed, a US military statement said, were two snipers, two "criminals" firing rocket-propelled grenades, groups firing machine guns and automatic weapons and three men placing roadside bombs.

The US and Iraqi forces hit back with small arms fire, a Hellfire missile fired from an aerial drone and artillery shells blasted from a M1A2 Abrams tank.

US and Iraqi forces have since Sunday been battling militiamen in Sadr City, bastion of the Mahdi Army fighters of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and other Shiite areas of eastern Baghdad...