10 American Soldiers Killed Amid Weekend Violence in Iraq

By Steven R. Hurst

The U.S. military announced the weekend deaths of 10 American soldiers, including six killed Sunday in Iraq.

The deaths came as powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his militiamen to redouble their battle to oust American forces and argued that Iraq’s army and police should join him in defeating “your archenemy.”

Among the U.S. deaths announced Sunday were three soldiers killed by a roadside bomb while patrolling south of Baghdad; one killed in an attack south of the capital; and two who died of combat wounds suffered north of the capital, in Diyala and Salahuddin provinces. Saturday, the military said, four U.S. soldiers were killed in an explosion near their vehicle in Diyala.

At least 3,280 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq War in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven civilians who worked for the military.

Security remained so tenuous in the capital on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the U.S. capture of Baghdad that Iraq’s military declared a 24-hour ban on all vehicles in the capital beginning at 5 a.m. today. The government quickly reinstated today as a holiday, just a day after it had decreed it no longer would be a day off.

Violence in Iraq remains, four years after Marines and the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division swept into the Iraqi capital 20 days into the American invasion.

Twenty miles south of Baghdad, a truck bomb exploded Sunday near Mahmoudiyah General Hospital, killing at least 18 people and wounding 23. The pickup truck loaded with artillery shells blew apart several buildings in a warren of auto repair shops.

Most of the dead were mechanics in the repair shops, officials said. The hospital was slightly damaged by shrapnel. Many of the victims were in their homes at the time of the blast.

At least 47 people were killed or found dead in violence Sunday, including 17 execution victims dumped in the capital.

Sunday’s statement by al-Sadr carried his seal and was distributed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where the cleric called for an enormous demonstration to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad’s fall. Al-Sadr commands an enormous following among Iraq’s majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite- dominated government.

“You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don’t walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy,” al-Sadr said, urging his followers not to attack fellow Iraqis but to turn all their efforts on American forces.

Al-Sadr apparently issued the statement in response to three days of clashes between his Mahdi Army militiamen and U.S.-backed Iraqi troops in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad.

In Washington, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, said al-Sadr’s words showed the American troop surge was working.

“He is not calling for a resurgence of sectarian conflict. He’s striking a nationalist chord. We’re going to have to watch him closely. He’s not our friend. . . . He’s acknowledging that the surge is working,” the senator, a strong backer of the war, said on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.”

In response to al-Sadr’s statement, Iraqis journeyed toward Najaf for today’s fourth anniversary demonstration. Witnesses said thousands of residents in Baghdad’s largest Shiite slum, Sadr City, boarded buses and minivans Sunday for Najaf.

In response, Najaf police spokesman Col. Ali Jiryo said cars were banned from entering the city for 24 hours starting at 8 p.m. Sunday. Buses would be used from all city entrances to transport arriving demonstrators or other visitors to the city center. Najaf residents would be allowed to drive, he said.

In other developments:

* In a rural area just east of Baghdad, three mortar rounds crashed into houses; six people were taken to a hospital in Sadr City with breathing troubles from a possible chemical agent, police said.

* U.S. forces captured a senior al-Qaida in Iraq leader and two others in a raid in Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The leader was not identified.

* British forces handed over control of a military base in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, to Iraqi troops. The Shatt al-Arab base is the second to be transferred to Iraqi control in Basra in the past month.

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