U.S. kills 26 militants in Baghdad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops killed about 26 suspected militants in Baghdad's Sadr City on Saturday in one of the fiercest clashes in the Shi'ite stronghold since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Residents of the east Baghdad slum district, a bastion of fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia, said the fighting lasted six hours and involved helicopter-fired missile strikes.

The U.S. military said American forces staged two separate raids into Sadr City targeting militants suspected of close ties to "Iranian terror networks" and who were responsible for bringing Iranian weapons into Iraq.

"Coalition Forces killed an estimated 26 terrorists and detained 17 suspected secret cell terrorists during the two operations," a U.S. military statement said. There were no civilian casualties, the U.S. military said separately.

A witness at a Sadr City hospital said nine civilians were wounded. Other residents said several cars were burned and they insisted all the people killed in the clashes were civilians.

A Sadr aid disputed the claim of heavy casualties. Ammar al-Saadi told Reuters that fewer than 10 people had been killed, with three wounded and six detained in the raids.

People were still cleaning up hours later alongside homes whose walls were pock-marked by bullets fired in the fighting.

Sadr City resident Ali Jasim was asleep on the roof of his home when the fighting broke out.

"They came in and started firing randomly in the streets and I got back into my bed because I was afraid I would be shot if I tried to watch," he said.

Elsewhere, a suicide bomber dressed as a policeman killed at least six people on Saturday when he blew himself up outside a police recruitment centre north east of Baghdad, an Iraqi army source said. The source said 30 people were wounded when the bomber detonated his explosives beside a queue of people waiting to enter the recruitment office.

A separate witness said the death toll was much higher from the attack in al-Muqdadiya, 90 km (50 miles) north east of Baghdad.

MEHDI ARMY

The U.S. military has launched a major offensive around the capital to crack down on Shi'ite militias and drive out Sunni Islamist al Qaeda fighters.

The operations are backed by 28,000 extra American troops ordered to Iraq by U.S. President George W. Bush.

The pre-dawn raids, which the U.S. military said were met with a hail of gunfire and rocket propelled grenades, risk escalating tensions with the Mehdi Army -- Sadr's powerful militia that has kept a relatively low profile since the latest clampdown got under way.

In a possible anticipation of Mehdi Army anger, Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki forbade U.S. forces from acting unilaterally or without government permission.

U.S. military officials were not immediately available to comment on whether the Sadr City raids had Iraqi approval.

Washington blames rogue Mehdi Army elements of using technologically advanced roadside bombs, which are made from components smuggled in from Iran, to target U.S. troops.

One of these powerful devices was probably used in an ambush that killed five U.S. soldiers in Baghdad on Thursday. U.S. forces also say that mortars fired almost daily at the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the U.S. and other foreign embassies as well as the Iraqi government, are made in Iran.

"There's no doubt that they are coming out of Iran," Major General Joseph Fil, who commands U.S. troops in the capital, told reporters in Washington on Friday.

In a separate development, the U.S. military said it had charged two of its soldiers for the murder of three Iraqis in different incidents around the religiously mixed city of Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, between April and June 2007.

Staff Sergeant Michael Hensley was charged with three counts of premeditated murder and Specialist Jorge Sandoval one count.

Both men were from the 1st Battalion, 501 Infantry Regiment, based at Fort Richardson in Alaska. They were investigated after fellow soldiers reported the alleged wrongdoing, the military said, and are now being held in Kuwait pending trial.