US and Iraqi forces killed 30 Shia militiamen Sunday during a fierce street battle in the southern city of Diwaniyah in which a US main battle tank was severely damaged.
The fighting erupted amid attacks around the country, which is in the grip of a bloody sectarian conflict that kills around 100 people daily, and one day after police found the corpses of 51 murder victims in Baghdad.
Gunbattles broke out in Diwaniyah after a joint Iraqi and US force tried to arrest a local Shia militia leader accused of slaughtering Iraqi soldiers during a previous clash in August, Iraqi officials said.
A US tank was disabled by a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) during the clashes, but the snatch squad returned and seized their suspect, identified by Iraqi sources as a local commander of the Mahdi Army militia.
"Iraqi army and Multi-National Division Baghdad (MND-B) soldiers killed approximately 30 terrorists and detained a high-value target after a terrorist attack today in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad," a military statement said.
An Iraqi defence official named the suspect as Kifah al-Greiti, a commander in the Mahdi Army of Shiite radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr. In August, Mahdi Army fighters killed more than 20 Iraqi soldiers in Diwaniyah, officials said at the time, accusing the militia of murdering in cold blood a dozen troops who ran out of ammunition during a gunbattle.
Comments
Comments are closed.