An estimated forty people were killed in Iraq today with 36 dead in battles that raged between insurgents and US forces in Sadr city in Baghdad.
US warplanes later launched airstrikes on the Iraqi city of Falluja in an assault that left at least four people dead. US forces battled rebel cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr's gunmen in the Baghdad slum of Sadr city leaving at least 36 people, including one American soldier, dead in the clashes. More than 200 were wounded, US and Iraqi authorities said.
Five other American soldiers were killed in separate attacks in and around Baghdad in the first two days of the week, bringing the US death toll from the past two days to 13.
A total of 997 US service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to a count by The Associated Press based on Defence Department reports.
US tanks moved into Sadr City and armoured personnel carriers and Bradley fighting vehicles were deployed at key intersections. Ambulances with sirens wailing rushed the wounded to hospitals as plumes of black smoke rose over the mainly Shiite neighbourhood.
In another part of the capital, a roadside bomb targeted the Baghdad governor's convoy, killing two people but leaving him uninjured, the Interior Ministry said. Three of Governor Ali al-Haidri's bodyguards were also hurt.
The fighting in Sadr City erupted when militants attacked US forces carrying out routine patrols, killing one American, said army Captain Brian O'Malley.
The US soldier was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade strike.
An al-Sadr spokesman in Baghdad, Sheik Raed al-Kadhimi, blamed what he called intrusive American incursions into Sadr City and attempts to arrest the cleric's followers.
The renewed fighting came after a period of calm in the impoverished neighbourhood after al-Sadr called on his followers last week to observe a cease-fire and announced he was going into politics.
Later today,
as US forces assaulted Falluja, a
hospital official in that city, Dr. Mohammed Aboud, said
the dead included an eight-year-old child and a 65-year-old man.
Twelve people were also wounded as witnesses said flames erupted across whole neighbourhoods and US warplanes bombarded suspected guerrilla targets in the eastern part of the city.
A US military spokesman did not immediately have information on the fighting in Falluja, where insurgents killed seven US Marines yesterday in what was
the deadliest attack on US forces in five months.
Witnesses said shelling by US tanks caused some Iraqis to leave their homes. Falluja hospital did not immediately have any information on casualties.
US forces have mounted frequent airstrikes on Falluja, which they say foreign fighters use as a base for operations. A US airstrike in Falluja on what the military said were safehouses used by allies of al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week killed at least 17 people last week.