Civilians reportedly among the dead in Sadr City attacks

The U.S. Army said they were militants. Sadr City residents said at least some were civilians, and photographs showed a dust-covered child being pulled from a mountain of rubble after Tuesday’s fighting.

Whatever the facts, at least 28 people were dead after the four-hour battle, the latest killed in a showdown between U.S. and Iraqi forces and Shiite Muslim militiamen over recent weeks.

Based on the photographs, it appeared that at least one of the dead was a civilian. In its captions, the Associated Press identified the boy in bloodied shorts being carried from the ruins of a house as 2-year-old Ali Hussein. It said he was pronounced dead at a hospital.

The brother-in-law of an Iraqi journalist who works with The Times also was reported killed. The victim recently had moved his immediate family out of the neighborhood because of the fighting.

The journalist, reached by phone Tuesday night, said he was at the funeral and could not speak.

The destruction and death toll underscored the intensity of fighting in Sadr City, where U.S. forces are pursuing militants who often operate from the narrow alleyways and crowded residential sectors of the sprawling Shiite stronghold. Clashes have occurred there nearly every day since the end of March, when an Iraqi military crackdown on Shiite militias sparked an uprising by fighters loyal to cleric Muqtada Sadr.

With many of Sadr City’s main roads peppered with roadside bombs and its side streets too narrow for U.S. tanks or other heavy vehicles to navigate, U.S. forces often call in airstrikes or use guided rockets to hit their targets.

Residents say civilians often are caught in the chaos.

The military says it does everything it can to avoid this. In a statement Tuesday, a military spokesman responded angrily to the accusations that troops had killed civilians in the latest battle.

“The rockets struck militants firing from buildings, alleyways and rooftops,” Lt. Col. Steven Stover wrote in an e-mailed response to questions. “We are NOT targeting law-abiding civilians. Those targeted were firing weapons at U.S. soldiers.”

Stover said the clashes began in the late morning as troops evacuating a wounded U.S. soldier came under attack. Two bombs, followed by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenade blasts, targeted the vehicle trying to get the wounded man to safety, Stover said.

A third bomb hit another vehicle. U.S. forces responded with guided rockets launched from the ground. Stover denied residents’ claims that helicopters fired on them from the air.

He said six Americans were hurt in the fighting, but their injuries weren’t life-threatening.

Early today, the U.S. military announced the deaths of two soldiers Tuesday in the northwestern part of the capital. Separate statements said one was killed by a roadside bomb and the other by gunfire. At least 4,058 U.S. service members have been killed since the war began in March 2003, according to the independent website icasualties.org.

In Sadr City, Abu Ahmed, a resident of Sector 10, said two rockets hit the neighborhood, where many of the small homes are crowded with three or four families.

He said the first rocket demolished several homes in the middle of a block.

“When some people rushed to evacuate the people and the families who were killed or injured, they were attacked by another rocket,” Abu Ahmed said.

Violence also rocked Diyala province, a Sunni Muslim stronghold north of Baghdad. Police said a female suicide bomber killed one person and injured five in the village of Mukhisa. The victims were members of the local Sons of Iraq group, men who have volunteered to work alongside U.S. and Iraqi forces to fight insurgents.

In Baghdad, assassins killed Dhia Jodi Jaber, the director general of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. Some reports said he was shot, but others said a roadside bomb blast hit his motorcade.

The trial for one of the best known members of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, former Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz, got underway in Baghdad but was quickly adjourned until May 20.

Aziz, 72, is accused of ordering the executions of 42 merchants accused of driving up prices for essential goods by violating state price controls in 1992. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

He has been in custody since April 2003.

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tina.susman@latimes.com

Special correspondents in Baghdad and Baqubah contributed to this report.