British and Iraqi troops fought intense battles against alleged Iran-backed Shia militants in southern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 30 people, the US military and Iraqi police said.
Fierce fighting erupted in Maysan province when joint raids by British and Iraqi forces took on militiamen in and around the provincial capital of Amara, US and British military officials said. Troops called in air support after coming under heavy small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire, the US military said in a statement. "Coalition forces killed at least 20 terrorists" in the Maysan raids, it said, adding that six more were wounded and another detained.
But Maysan provincial council member Latif al-Timimi said 16 civilians were killed and another 14 wounded, including a woman and a child. "Most of the dead were killed in bombings as they were sleeping on the roofs of their homes. Those killed were residents and not linked to any political party," he said.
Timimi said the council decided at an emergency meeting to demand an apology from British and Iraqi forces, and to suspend work for three days. The US military insisted those killed in the Maysan raids were "terrorists" responsible for smuggling explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) from Iran to Iraq and for bringing Iraqi fighters to Iran for training.
The military has regularly charged that the EFPs, capable of cutting through even heavily-armoured vehicles, are manufactured in Iran and smuggled to armed groups in Iraq to fight US-led troops.
"Intelligence reports indicate that both Amara and Mujar al-Kabir (to the south of Amara) are known safe havens and smuggling routes for secret cell terrorists who facilitate Iranian lethal aid," the military said.
"Reports further indicate that Iranian surrogates, or Iraqis that are liaisons for Iranian intelligence operatives into Iraq, use both Amara and Mujar al-Kabir as safe haven locations." An Iraqi security official in Amara said the British troops threw leaflets from helicopters during the raids declaring: "The Iraqi government will not be soft on terrorism."
Other leaflets announced that "Maysan will not be a safe area for the Iranian Qods Force and its agents who want to weaken the Iraqi government." British forces pulled out of Amara in August 2006, handing over security to Iraqi forces. Since then the town has seen frequent clashes between militamen and security forces.
A spokesman for radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr confirmed the Amara raids, raising suspicion that those killed could be Shiite militants loyal to the cleric, whose followers have often clashed with security forces.
"Last night British forces carried out a mission using helicopters and aircraft in Amara. They used bombs, missiles and small arms fire," said Auda al-Baharani. Police said at least another 10 people, including five policemen, were killed in similar clashes in and around the southern city of Nasiriyah. Some 59 people were wounded, a police officer said.
Meanwhile, in southern Baghdad, three nearly simultaneous car bombs exploded outside a petrol station, killing six people and wounding another 27, security officials and medics said. The explosions happened in a line of cars waiting in the sweltering midday heat to get petrol following the lifting of a four-day curfew on Sunday.
Elsewhere in Iraq, four suspects linked to the bombing of the Shiite Al-Askari shrine on Wednesday were arrested by Iraqi troops in a raid, the US military said. The attack on the shrine destroyed its two gold-topped minarets and set off reprisals on Sunni shrines, mostly in southern Iraq. The military also announced on Monday that another US soldier had been killed in Baghdad the day before, bringing the total number of US casualties this month to 42.
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