From combined dispatches
BAGHDAD — Twenty people were killed in Baghdad’s Shi’ite slum of Sadr City yesterday, security sources said, despite a vehicle ban to prevent unrest from spreading on the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.
Up to 70 people have died in Sadr City since Sunday in battles between militia loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and U.S. and Iraqi troops.
“The floor of the hospital is covered with the blood of children,” said Dr. Qasim al-Mudalla, manager of the Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City, where he said four children and two women were among 11 dead bodies brought in yesterday.
Other parts of Baghdad were quiet, with streets clear of traffic because of a one-day vehicle ban in the capital for the anniversary of the day U.S. troops rolled into the capital to depose President Saddam Hussein.
Shops, government offices, schools and universities were closed and residents were allowed out only on foot.
The fighting came as the U.S. military announced the deaths of five more soldiers. That raised the number of American troop deaths to 17 since Sunday. Rockets or mortars, which U.S. forces say are mainly fired from Sadr City, hit the Green Zone compound but caused no injuries, the U.S. Embassy said.
Masked militiamen fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades at U.S.-backed Iraqi troops throughout the day. At 10 a.m., two mortar shells apparently fired by suspected Shi’ite extremists at the security forces fell short and instead struck a funeral tent and a house, killing seven people including three children, and wounding 27, according to police and hospital officials.
Nearly two hours later, a mortar attack struck another house, killing seven more people and wounding 36.
The U.S. military said a drone launched a Hellfire missile at two gunmen shooting at government forces in a different part of Sadr City, killing both men.
Sheik al-Sadr had called a mass demonstration against the United States for the anniversary, but postponed it saying he feared for his followers’ safety.
Many Iraqis spoke of the anniversary with bitterness.
Retired army officer Salim Hussein said the past five years had yielded nothing but “blood, bombs, curfews and in-fighting.”
“The government is totally incapable of providing security,” he said, walking near the square where U.S. forces toppled Saddam’s statue on April 9, 2003.
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