BAGHDAD, 13 May 2008 — The US military says Air Force fighter jets have dropped eight large bombs to destroy an Al-Qaeda in Iraq training base south of Baghdad. The military says yesterday’s airstrikes by two US Air Force F-16s targeted a large area booby trapped with bombs hidden in the ground and in trees.
Associated Press Television News footage showed an area covered in palm trees being leveled by powerful bombs. The military says the area in the district of Arab Jabour was used to manufacture bombs, stash weapons caches and train and launch sniper attacks at US military convoys.
Meanwhile, American troops fought street battles with Shiite militia in Baghdad’s Sadr City, killing three people on the first full day of a deal to end fighting in the area, a military official said yesterday.
US military spokesman Lt. Col. Steven Stover said troops came under attack in three incidents on Sunday evening and yesterday morning in Sadr City, stronghold of the Mehdi Army of Moqtada Sadr.
Stover said two “criminals” were shot dead by US troops in two confrontations while the third was killed by a tank shell. Medical and police sources in Sadr City, a teeming slum area where two million Iraqis live, said two bodies had been brought to the main hospital together with 25 wounded people.
The latest skirmishes came despite a deal announced on Saturday by the government of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and Sadr’s movement to end the violence in Sadr City.
Stover said that there were no rocket attacks from the area during the past 24 hours but that seven mortar rounds had been fired in west Baghdad. There were no casualties, he added.
One US soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in northwest Baghdad on Sunday night, but not in the Sadr City area, the military said in a separate statement. One of the main issues fueling the fighting in Sadr City has been the US military’s construction of a huge barrier in the southern section of the district to control access by residents.
