Dozens are killed in violence across Iraq

Sporadic shooting could be heard Friday in the southern city of Samawah after clashes erupted between security forces and members of the Al Mahdi militia affiliated with anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr.

Two Iraqi police officers were killed in the shootings, and 36 people were injured, including Iraqi police and soldiers, said Dr. Saleh Abdul Hassan, manager of a health clinic. Government offices closed and a curfew was imposed for the night, and security forces took sniper positions atop buildings, witnesses said.

To the north, in a Kurdish area near the border with Iran, a suicide car bomber struck Friday night outside a cafe, killing at least 19 people, all members of the same family, the U.S. military said. The blast occurred in a village near Sadiyah, about 100 miles northeast of Baghdad, said Army Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, a military spokesman.

The village is in remote eastern Diyala, a province where U.S. forces have been waging offensives aimed at insurgents who fled a security crackdown in Baghdad and at Al Qaeda militants who use the region as a staging ground for attacks in the capital.

In Samawah, Abdul Razzaq Zaidi, a neighborhood representative, said he hid with his family at home during the clashes, hesitant to emerge though he said the militants had left the area. Many residents stayed inside, he said, unable to shop or scrounge for gas and kerosene, which are in short supply.

“Life under the sanctions imposed on Iraq was better than the life these days in Samawah,” Zaidi said.

Tribal leader Abdul Kareem Khafaji said Al Mahdi gunmen were sticking to their stronghold in the Jumhouri neighborhood, across the Euphrates River from his home. “On the side of the river where I live, it is quiet,” he said. “But on the other side of the river, shooting can be heard from time to time.”

Khafaji said he and other tribal leaders had attempted to stop the spate of Al Mahdi militia violence by calling meetings with local officials, to no avail.

Samawah, the capital of Muthanna province, is about 145 miles southeast of Baghdad in a mainly Shiite area. Violence has erupted there several times in recent months, as well as in Nasiriya, about 50 miles to the east.

The latest outbreak followed an attempt Thursday by Al Mahdi fighters to visit Rumaitha, 20 miles north of Samawah, to inaugurate a new office, according to police. The men refused the Iraqi security forces’ demand to leave their weapons outside the town and returned to Samawah, where they gathered with about 150 supporters for a protest that led to clashes with police.

U.S. forces could be seen on the outskirts of the city Friday, witnesses said. British and Australian officials handed over security for Muthanna province to Iraqi forces in July 2006, and the city remains under Iraqi control.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed Friday in the capital, the military reported. Two died in east Baghdad when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol. Another soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were killed by an armor-penetrating bomb in southeast Baghdad. The military also reported the deaths Thursday of two Marines in Al Anbar and a soldier in Baghdad. Also, a soldier died Friday of wounds suffered earlier, the military said

The deaths brought the U.S. death toll in Iraq to 3,598, according to icasualties.org, which tracks deaths in Iraq.

The Iraqi government announced Friday that an Al Qaeda militant was hanged Tuesday in connection with an August 2003 bombing that killed scores of people, including Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim, a leading Shiite cleric.

Awraz Abdul Aziz was tried and sentenced in October by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, according to a statement from Judge Aboud Hamami.

Iraqi Justice Ministry official Busho Ibrahim told the Associated Press that Abdul Aziz had admitted to other attacks, including the 2004 killing of Ezzedine Salim, also known as Abdul Zahra Othman, president of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council created after the invasion.

The capital saw several attacks Friday, including a mortar barrage in the central Fadhil neighborhood that killed seven family members and injured two, a roadside bombing in the southeastern neighborhood of Zafaraniya that killed a civilian and injured another, and a barrage of about seven rockets that struck the fortified Green Zone, with no injuries reported, according to a U.S. Embassy spokesman. Elsewhere in the capital, police recovered five bodies.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, a roadside bombing Friday aimed at an Iraqi police patrol injured two civilians, said Kirkuk police Maj. Salim Khalil.

Gunmen attacked a checkpoint near the town of Mashahidah, 25 miles north of Baghdad, killing at least eight Iraqi soldiers, according to Hamid Mishedani, 19, a shop owner who saw the shooting. U.S. forces later encircled the town and arrested three suspects, police said.

To the south, four Iraqi soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing while driving between Hillah and Karbala at midnight.

British forces came under attack overnight Thursday and into Friday in the southern city of Basra, with mortar fire and shootings. No casualties were reported, said Maj. Matthew Bird, a spokesman for British forces.

molly.hennessy-fiske@ latimes.com

Times staff writers Raheem Salman, Said Rifai and Saif Hameed and special correspondents in Baghdad, Hillah, Kirkuk and Samawah contributed to this report.