BAGHDAD, 7 September 2007 — US combat helicopters and tanks bombarded a Baghdad neighborhood in pre-dawn strikes yesterday, killing 14 sleeping civilians and destroying houses, angry residents and Iraqi officials said. The US military, which has deployed thousands of extra troops in the Iraqi capital to try to stem rampant violence, said the operation was aimed at Shiite extremists and the houses destroyed were “enemy strongholds.”
Iraqi Defense and Interior Ministry officials said US helicopters fired on houses in the Al-Washash neighborhood of Mansour district in west Baghdad between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m.
Abu Ali Saad, a resident of the mainly Shiite enclave, said US military vehicles had arrived in large numbers in Al-Washash during the night. “There were tanks and armored vehicles and many troops,” 35-year-old Saad said while surveying the rubble of his neighbor’s home.
“The tanks started firing, then the helicopters came. Missiles were fired from the air. Houses were destroyed. A family of five was killed in this house,” he said, referring to his neighbors. “We are a peaceful neighborhood. There are no militia here. There were no exchanges of fire. We were all sleeping.”
The US military said Iraqi and US forces had engaged Shiite extremists who were part of a “terrorist cell” operating in Al-Washash.
When the forces entered the area, they came under fire from “more than a dozen extremists firing from the rooftops of surrounding buildings,” a statement said.
The fire was returned and airstrikes were carried out against “positively identified armed gunmen directing small arms fire onto the assault force.”
“A total of four buildings were damaged, including two enemy strongholds that sustained major damage and two surrounding buildings that sustained moderate damage.”
A later US military statement suggested that the targets of the operation in Al-Washash were dissident elements of the Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada Sadr.
It said that while “many honorable” Mahdi Army members were heeding a call by Sadr last week to halt their militia activities, others were ignoring it. These groups, it warned, “will not be subject to the restraint we have observed for those who are responding to Sadr’s orders.”
An AFP photographer on the scene said three houses were destroyed and two damaged. Amid the rubble of one house was a mattress covered in blood with body parts scattered about. Neighbors said a family of six had been killed in the house, including a 12-year-old girl.
Bloodstains could be seen amid the wreckage of other houses, where angry residents gathered to denounce the US military.
