IRAQ: Over 80 people were killed in Iraq yesterday in another day of violent incidents. At least 20 Iraqi soldiers were killed in street fighting with Shia militiamen in the town of Diwaniya in Shia southern Iraq. The defence ministry said 50 militiamen had died in the clashes.
A Polish helicopter was hit by gunfire as it provided air support to Iraqi troops but landed safely. US aircraft also took part and US-led foreign troops sealed off the city before calm returned by nightfall after talks among Shia leaders.
Underlining the variety of challenges facing the 100-day-old national unity government of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, a suicide car bomber in Baghdad killed 13 policemen and wounded 62 other people outside the interior ministry. Mr Maliki has vowed to disarm all militias, including those of fellow Shia Islamists with seats in the coalition cabinet. But US-trained government forces face an uphill task.
The defence ministry, local officials and the Mehdi Army of populist young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr gave conflicting accounts of battles overnight and into the day in Diwaniya, a normally placid provincial capital, 180km (110 miles) south of Baghdad.
A defence ministry spokesman in the capital said 20 of its soldiers were killed along with 50 unidentified "gunmen" who had stormed police stations after dark on Sunday. A local leader of the Mehdi Army insisted only two of his men had been killed. A US military official said 30 Iraqi troops were wounded.
A hospital official and an army source in Diwaniya both put the army's death toll at 25 with a further five missing. A Reuters reporter saw 19 bodies in army uniform in the morgue, as well as seven civilians. The hospital said nine civilians died, adding that 51 people, including eight soldiers, were wounded. A senior police source in the town said Iraqi troops stormed an area known as a Mehdi Army stronghold, in response to a rocket attack on a nearby Polish base on Saturday.
An agreement brokered in the nearby clerical city of Najaf between al-Sadr and the Diwaniya governor brought an edgy calm after many hours of mortar, rocket and machine gun fire. The US military said in a statement that casualty totals were unclear. "Iraqi army and police forces successfully fended off an attack by a large group of terrorists . . . after a 12-hour battle."
The Baghdad bombing resembled many carried out by al-Qaeda and pro-Saddam Hussein militants from the once dominant Sunni minority and was one of the worst in the capital since US and Iraqi troops launched a security clampdown three weeks ago.
Eight US soldiers were among more than 60 people killed on Sunday in violence that challenged Mr Maliki's assertion his forces had the upper hand and there would be no civil war.
The chief US military spokesman said killings in Baghdad had almost halved this month from last and that car bombings were at an eight-month low. But Maj Gen William Caldwell acknowledged there had been a rise again in the past two days. Maliki has vowed to take on militias, and, senior officials say, plans to ease some al-Sadr supporters out of his cabinet. But al-Sadr remains popular among poor Shia, partly for his charity work modelled on Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hizbullah, and despite the crushing by US troops of his two revolts in 2004. He has lately enjoyed warm ties with Iran, whose Shia Islamist leaders maintain close contact in Iraq and whom the US accuses of providing arms to Shia militias.
British defence minister Des Browne, in Baghdad yesterday, said his forces would hand over a second of the four southern provinces to formal Iraqi security control shortly.