BAGHDAD, 1 May 2008 — The death toll for US troops in Iraq reached a seven-month high in April, with the reported deaths of three more soldiers yesterday bringing the monthly toll to 47, the highest since last September.
US and Iraqi forces have been engaged in intense fighting over the past month with the followers of Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr in the US-occupied nation’s capital.
Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, who launched a crackdown against Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia a month ago in the southern city of Basra, said yesterday the government would disarm the fighters by force if they refuse to lay down their weapons.
Two hospitals in Sadr City said they had received the bodies of 421 Iraqis and treated more than 2,400 wounded people there since late March. Government spokesman Tahseen Al-Sheikhly said the toll there was higher, with more than 900 killed.
Many of the dead and wounded have been civilians, caught in the crossfire in the crowded slum.
Some of the heaviest fighting has taken place in the past three days, with insurgents taking advantage of blinding dust storms that ground US attack helicopters to launch large ambushes of US positions.
US forces have responded with tank fire and surface-to-surface missiles, destroying buildings. Thirty-four bodies and 112 wounded victims were brought to the two Sadr City hospitals in the last 24 hours, hospital officials said. American forces said they killed 34 Iraqis in Sadr City on Tuesday in a series of clashes including one street battle that raged for four hours.
April’s US death toll is the highest since September 2007, when 65 US soldiers died in Iraq, according to official figures tracked by icasualties.org, an independent website.
The toll is still far lower than a year ago, however. In April 2007, 104 US services members were killed in Iraq.
“We lost three soldiers last night,” US military spokesman Maj. Mark Cheadle said yesterday.
Al-Maliki aimed some of his toughest language yet at the Sadr City fighters yesterday, singling out the Mehdi Army by name and clubbing it with groups like Al-Qaeda as organizations that must be dissolved.
He set down four conditions — that the militia disarm, stop interfering in state affairs, stop running their own courts and hand over wanted fugitives — or face a military assault.
“To refuse these conditions means the continuation of the government’s efforts to disarm them by force,” Al-Maliki said at a news conference inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone.
“There is no alternative to these conditions. The alternative is the continuation of force and clashes until we reach the end, to get rid of the weapons and the gangs who are carrying weapons.”
Al-Maliki launched a crackdown against Sadr followers last month in the southern city of Basra. After initial setbacks, the Basra offensive appears to have been a success in driving fighters from the streets there. But the militiamen remain in control of much of Baghdad’s Sadr City.
