Shootout Disrupts Calm in Sadr City

Fawzi Salman was asleep on his roof in the midnight heat when he was startled awake by something he had not heard in a year: American gunfire in Sadr City.

It had been that long since U.S. troops and black-clad militiamen battled in the alleys of the huge Baghdad slum. Since then, it had become one of the calmest places in a city of daily car bombs -- and a multimillion-dollar showcase of the U.S. reconstruction program.

Suddenly, in the first hour of Sunday, the truce and the American bid for stability and goodwill in Sadr City were in jeopardy as U.S. troops clashed anew with Al Mahdi militia fighters loyal to Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr. Medical officials said three men apparently belonging to the militia and two unarmed females, including an 8-year-old girl, were killed on a day of fighting that claimed at least 27 other lives across Iraq.

The resurgence of violence in Sadr City came on the heels of clashes in Basra last week between British forces and Al Mahdi militiamen and in the run-up to an Oct. 15 referendum on Iraq’s proposed U.S.-backed constitution.

The clashes could boost popular support for Sadr, a fierce critic of the U.S. presence who is bucking mainstream Shiite support for the charter.

American-led coalition forces that routinely patrol Sadr City said they were drawn into Sunday’s fight after unidentified gunmen ambushed an Iraqi army unit. The Iraqi unit had been pursuing three insurgents suspected of working in a kidnapping cell, according to a U.S. military statement, which reported no arrests.

Although Iraqi soldiers and militiamen were involved in the shooting, several Sadr City residents criticized it as an unwarranted American assault on their neighborhoods. Some said American troops had raided houses in search of weapons and militia members.

“I was gathered with my friends in the street when all of a sudden we saw American troops invading our neighborhood, shooting in every direction,” said Imad Abed Hussein, a 23-year-old merchant who was one of 11 wounded residents taken to Qadissiya Hospital.

“The American forces raided our peaceful town trying to detain members of the militia,” said Hassan Raad, 18. “Our neighborhood is full of them, but I don’t think they took anybody. They only fired randomly and killed innocent people.”

Sadr City’s 2 million residents were neglected under former President Saddam Hussein. The United States is trying to win friends there by funding such projects as cleaning up trash and digging wells and by hiring militia members to do the work. But most of the neighborhoods remain blighted, with sewage water spilling into unpaved streets. Frequent power cuts mean the tiny brick homes stay unbearably hot, even at night, when people sleep in the open air.

When the shooting started, Salman, 46, scrambled to awaken his family and get them down from the roof. “Unfortunately, I was the last one to get inside, and I was hit in the shoulder,” he said.

As they buried the dead Sunday, residents of the slum said their anger at the Americans had been compounded by roadblocks that prevented ambulances from getting wounded people to the hospital until 4 a.m., about two hours after the shooting was over.

Some who reached the hospital left in a hurry after treatment, alarmed by a rumor that U.S. troops were coming to raid the place and arrest them, said Dr. Abed Jabar, the hospital director. The rumor was unfounded, he said. But it underscored a deep distrust of the Americans despite their largess.

“I am concerned about the events early this morning, but I do not believe this action reflects a pattern of change leading to more violence,” said Col. Joseph DiSalvo, commander of the U.S.-led forces in eastern Baghdad, which patrol Sadr City. He said coalition and Iraqi troops would continue their patrols “and aggressively pursue all leads against the terrorists.”

Abdul Hadi Daraji, a spokesman for Sadr’s political movement, accused U.S. forces of trying to provoke conflict in Sadr City and discourage its residents from voting.

But he added: “We are asking our people to remain quiet.”

In other violence Sunday, a bomber on a motorcycle killed himself and at least five visitors to a Shiite shrine in Musayyib, and a bomb planted on an abandoned bicycle exploded amid shoppers on a street in Hillah, killing one. Eight people died when mortar shells struck their homes in Samarra. In Baghdad, gunmen held up an armored Finance Ministry convoy, killed two guards and escaped with $850,000.

Three members of an elite Iraqi police brigade, four roadside bread merchants and two other bystanders died when a suicide bomber’s minibus jumped a highway median in Baghdad and exploded against a pickup leading the brigade’s convoy. The blast left a crater in the highway and hurled shrapnel, glass, scraps of tire, and pieces of flesh and bone over a radius of nearly half a mile.

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Times staff writers Caesar Ahmed and Raheem Salman contributed to this report.