Iraqis claim 13 civilians killed

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. forces engaged in an hours-long gun battle with militants during an early morning raid in the Shiite Muslim district of Sadr City on Sunday and killed as many as 49 people. The Iraqi government said 13 civilians were killed and 69 were wounded, and protested the American military action.

The American military said that all of those killed were “criminals” and they were not aware of civilian casualties.

A freelance correspondent for the Los Angeles Times said he saw the corpses of a woman and two small children. Among the wounded were an 8-year-old and an 11-year-old boy, who were interviewed in their hospital beds. Another man said his 11/2-year old son was killed, as well as a neighbor’s son the same age.

U.S. officials said the raid did not capture or kill its target, identified as the leader of a kidnapping cell that is part of a Shiite militant movement called the Special Groups, a splinter group of the Mahdi Army no longer following orders from militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The Special Groups are believed by American officials to be trained, funded and supplied by Iran through its Revolutionary Guard forces.

According to the initial U.S. account, ground forces arrived in Sadr City, a stronghold of Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and began clearing buildings where their target was believed to be when they came under fire from machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

The soldiers called in air strikes that killed six assailants, American authorities said. When leaving the area, they said, the forces were targeted by a roadside bomb.

In a subsequent account, the U.S. said the ground forces had returned fire in the initial attack, killing an additional 33 people. American officials said ground forces had continued to receive automatic weapon and RPG fire in addition to the roadside bomb as they departed the area, and that 10 more combatants were killed at that time.

In both accounts, the military said it was “unaware of any innocent civilians being killed as a result of this operation.”

Sunday’s fighting follows incidents in recent weeks in which U.S. forces killed 15 civilians in an attack on alleged leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq, and Western private security contractors shot and killed unarmed Iraqi civilians.

In Parliament on Sunday, Iraqi officials discussed the possibility of placing restrictions on U.S. military operations in Iraq when it negotiates the terms of the U.N. resolution that authorizes the U.S. presence here. The resolution comes up for its annual re-authorization before year’s end.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement demanding that the U.S. not use such overwhelming force in pursuing targets, and that it should further coordinate its efforts with Iraqi government forces. He said the Iraqi government would conduct an investigation into the Sunday’s fighting in Sadr City.

The intensity and frequency of American attacks and raids have grown since the arrival of the last of 30,000 additional soldiers on June 15.

The reinforcements were ordered into Iraq earlier this year by Bush and have inflicted a heavy toll on militants on both sides of Iraq’s sectarian divide. American commanders credit the troop buildup for a sharp drop in the number of attacks and deaths of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians, particularly in the past two months.

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