Police in the southern Iraqi Shia holy city of Najaf imposed a curfew today after a top aide to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was killed by gunmen, police said.
A woman cries after her son was killed in an air strike in Basra today
A Reuters reporter in the city said police set up blockades, ordered shops closed and people off the streets after the shooting of Sadr aide Riyadh al-Nuri.
Meanwhile air strikes on a Baghdad and in the southern Iraqi city of Basra killed 12 people overnight, US and British military said today.
US soldiers operating a drone plane over the eastern Baghdad Shia slum of Sadr City late last night fired a Hellfire missile at a group of men allegedly carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers, killing six, the US military said.
In Basra, Iraq's second largest city, British forces launched an air strike against fighters they said engaged Iraqi ground troops, killing six and wounding one, the British military said.
"We had our eyes on an enemy mortar team which was firing on Iraqi armed forces on the ground," said British Major Tom Holloway. "The mortar team had been engaging Iraqi ground forces."
Basra has been relatively quiet since Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called his Mehdi Army militia off the streets of the city nearly two weeks ago.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched a crackdown on militias in Basra in late March, sparking a new wave of violence in southern Iraq and Baghdad.