US troops killed 34 militiamen in a Baghdad stronghold of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr today in a series of clashes including one street battle that lasted four hours, the US military said.
Sources at two hospitals in the Iraqi cleric's bastion of Sadr City said they had received the bodies of 30 people killed and were treating 50 wounded. Women and children were among the casualties, they said, without elaborating.
Photographs taken by a Reuters photographer showed rescue workers carrying the body of a small boy from a house that had been destroyed. It was unclear what had destroyed the house. The body of another child was seen being brought to hospital.
Firemen search for victims in the ruins of a house hit by air strikes
Fighting has flared up since Sunday when gunmen used the cover of dust storms to launch attacks on US and Iraqi positions, despite a call by Sadr on Friday to observe a shaky truce he has threatened to scrap unless the government ends incursions against his Mehdi Army militia.
The attacks by militants indicate some fighters claiming allegiance to Sadr are ignoring his call for a truce to be observed, raising questions about how far he controls them and whether he is sincere about wanting to defuse the conflict.
Security forces have been fighting militiamen loyal to the anti-American cleric for weeks but the latest battles mark a dangerous escalation of the conflict.
Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Stover, a spokesman for the US military in the Iraqi capital, said the gunmen were killed in a series of battles that began just after midnight in Sadr City, home to two million people.
Lieutenant-Colonel Stover said 28 gunmen were killed in one four-hour battle that erupted when militants attacked troops with roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms.
Six US soldiers were wounded overall, the military said.
The storms have grounded US Apache attack helicopters which hunt rocket and mortar teams, enabling fighters to fire salvoes of rockets at targets in Baghdad, including its heavily fortified Green Zone government and diplomatic compound.
Lieutenant-Colonel Stover said the US military had used a range of weapons in the battles today, including a Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, a ground-based weapon which fires rockets.
"We will defend ourselves and the law-abiding Iraqi citizens," Colonel Allen Batschelet, chief of staff of the commander of US forces in Baghdad, said in a statement.
"We continually show great restraint and professionalism when attacked and clearly identify the enemy before engaging their positions. The enemy continues to show little regard for innocent civilians."
The deaths brought the number of militants the US says it killed since a flare-up of violence on Sunday evening to 79.
Lieutenant-Colonel Stover also said US troops recovered three 81 mm Iranian-made mortars today. The US military accuses Iran of supplying weapons and training to rogue elements of the Mehdi Army, a charge Tehran denies.
US and Iraqi troops have been locked in a month of fighting with militiamen since Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shia, ordered an offensive in the southern oil city of Basra.
After early setbacks, the militiamen appear to have been driven from the streets in Basra. But fighting has continued in Baghdad, mostly around Sadr City.