TEHRAN, 8 April 2008 — Iran voiced support yesterday for Iraq’s prime minister in a crackdown on a Shiite militia but blamed US forces for civilian deaths in the fighting.

The Islamic Republic also said the United States, its old foe, had requested a new round of talks on improving security in Iraq and Tehran was considering it. Easing a diplomatic freeze lasting almost three decades, Iranian and US officials met three times in Baghdad last year, but a planned fourth meeting has been repeatedly postponed.

“We have received a new request by American officials ... for the holding of negotiations on the Iraqi developments and we are looking into the case,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a news conference.

In Baghdad, US Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said: “We understand the Iraqi government is trying to schedule another round of talks, and we are ready to participate.” Analysts say Tehran and Washington, despite their mutual accusations, may still have a shared interest in a stable Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki ordered a crackdown last month on militiamen in Basra, provoking clashes in Baghdad and the south and exposing deep rifts within the country’s majority Shiite community.

The fighting ebbed a week ago when Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr ordered his Mehdi Army militia off the streets, but picked up again on Sunday with renewed violence in the capital.

Hosseini said Maliki’s action was aimed at “confronting illegal armed groups” and this was in the interest of Iraq and its neighbors. There was a difference between those “that have perpetrated crimes and the political groups and factions that are active in the political process of Iraq,” he said without giving names.

Meanwhile, Iraqi troops backed by US forces battled gunmen in Baghdad’s Sadr City on Sunday. Hospital sources said at least 25 Iraqis were killed in the clashes and 98 wounded. Rocket or mortar attacks killed three US soldiers and wounded 31 of them in Baghdad, among the biggest tolls of injured troops faced by the Americans in months.

Lt. Gen. Abboud Qanbar, head of the Iraqi military in Baghdad, said all armed groups must hand in their weapons. “If they refuse to surrender their arms, we will confiscate them,” Qanbar told reporters at a police station in Sadr City.

US and Iraqi forces have imposed a blockade on vehicle traffic in and out of Sadr City for two weeks. Residents of the besieged district describe skyrocketing food prices, rubbish piling up and claustrophobia from being trapped indoors.

In Basra, an explosion destroyed a house and Iraqi police said yesterday eight people had died. Rescue workers were seen pulling bodies from the rubble of a house that had been completely destroyed. Relatives wailed in grief and children picked through the rubble.

Neighbors said they believed the blast was caused by a US airstrike, but British forces, responsible for US and British military activity in the area, denied any role and said they had no explanation for the blast.