U.S. military says kills 15 gunmen in Baghdad

By Dean Yates

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops said on Wednesday they killed 15 gunmen overnight in Shi'ite areas of Baghdad where fighting has raged for weeks between militiamen loyal to Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and security forces.

Ground forces and aircraft were involved in several attacks in and around eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. The first attack began around dusk on Tuesday.

Police said more than two dozen people had been killed in the past 24 hours in both Sadr City, the cleric's stronghold in eastern Baghdad, and a nearby Shi'ite area called Husseiniya. They said the death toll included two women.

Hundreds have died in Shi'ite areas of Baghdad since Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, himself a Shi'ite, launched a crackdown on Sadr's Mehdi Army militia a month ago.

Sadr has demanded a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and threatened over the weekend to wage "open war" if Maliki did not call off the campaign against his fighters in Baghdad, the southern oil hub of Basra and other Shi'ite areas.

Iraqi forces captured Sadr's key militia stronghold in Basra on the weekend. Lieutenant-General Lloyd Austin, the number two U.S. military commander in Iraq, told a news conference Iraqi forces had control of the city, which had been under the sway of militias before Maliki launched his crackdown.

In the four days since Sadr issued his threat of war -- which could unravel months of security gains while U.S. forces are drawing down -- the U.S. military says it killed around 65 fighters in Sadr City and other Shi'ite parts of Baghdad.

Colonel Allen Batschelet, chief of staff to the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, told reporters that militants had fired nearly 700 rockets and mortars in the past month.