Fierce Fighting in Baghdad, 38 Militants Killed
By VOA News
28 April 2008
The U.S. military says American and Iraqi troops have killed 38 militants in Baghdad in what it characterized as the fiercest fighting in weeks.
The military says Monday gunmen took advantage of a sandstorm that blanketed the Iraqi capital on Sunday to launch apparently coordinated assaults.
The sandstorm had grounded American helicopters, the main weapon used by U.S. forces to hunt insurgent rocket-launching crews.
Most of the fighting Sunday took place in Sadr City, the stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
In the biggest encounter, U.S. and Iraqi troops repelled a mass attack on an Iraqi checkpoint. The U.S military says 22 attackers were killed without any U.S. or Iraqi security force casualties.
The U.S. military reported killing 16 other militiamen in separate clashes in northeast and eastern Baghdad.
During the sandstorm, insurgents also fired at least eight rocket or mortar rounds into Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
