Last week, Maliki and his cronies were blocked by Sadr’s fighters. This week, US forces are taking their place, maintaining a seige force around Sadr City and attempting to defeat Sadr’s Mahdi army with both air strikes and sweeps into this Baghdad nationalist stronghold.
Reports of air strikes on Sadr City neighborhoods appear daily in Iraqi sources but get almost no attention here – and the civilian death toll mounts – again with barely a word in the US press…
Sharp fighting broke out in Baghdad’s Sadr City district on Sunday as American and Iraqi troops sought to control neighborhoods used by Shiite militias to fire rockets and mortars into the nearby Green Zone. But the operation failed to stop the attacks on the heavily fortified zone, headquarters for the Iraq central government and the American Embassy here. By day’s end, at least two American soldiers were killed and 17 wounded in the zone, one of the worst daily tolls for the American military in the most protected part of Baghdad. Altogether, at least three American soldiers were killed and 31 wounded in attacks in Baghdad on Sunday, and at least 20 Iraqis were killed, mostly in Sadr City.
The heightened violence came on the eve of congressional testimony in Washington by General David H. Petreaus, the senior American commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to defend their strategy for political reconciliation and improved security in the country…
Three U.S. service members were killed and dozens were wounded Sunday in rocket attacks on the fortified Green Zone and a military base in Baghdad, the U.S. military said. A fourth U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Diyala province, the military said. The rocket attacks came at 3:30 p.m., according to a U.S. military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. The attack on the Green Zone killed two of the soldiers and wounded 17, the official said. The other attack in the city, at a U.S. military base in Rustamiyah in eastern Baghdad, killed one soldier and wounded 14, the official said.
"It’s a tough day for us," the official said. "These are our colleagues, our friends." The Green Zone and U.S. military facilities have become frequent targets of rockets and mortar shells that military officials say are fired from Sadr City and other parts of eastern Baghdad.
The latest series of attacks began late last month in response to an Iraqi government military offensive against Shiite militias in Basra, in southern Iraq. A cease-fire negotiated between deputies of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who wields extraordinary influence among many Shiites, and the Iraqi government restored order last week…
First we heard of this [in the late Sunday editions]. Seems like it would’ve been "news."
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