Iraqi and US troops raid Baghdad district, kill 2

BAGHDAD — Iraqi and American soldiers came under fire from a house during a pre-dawn operation Wednesday in southeastern Baghdad, setting off a gunbattle that killed the two assailants, the U.S. military said.

The raid took place in a predominantly Shiite district of the capital called Zafaraniyah. American forces were on hand at the request of the Iraqis as advisers, U.S. military spokesman 1st Lt. John Brimley said.

Soldiers came under fire from two people in a nearby building and returned fire, killing both of the attackers, Brimley said in an e-mailed response to a request for comment.

At the scene, the brother of one the men killed said he had no idea what might have prompted the raid, which he called a “crime.” The U.S. military also did not divulge the reason for the operation.

The brother, who only wanted to be identified by his nickname, Abu Mustafa, because of security concerns, lives next door to the house where the men were killed.

He said the sound of an explosion woke him around 2 a.m. and he rushed to his door and saw Iraqi and American troops cordoning off the area. Then he heard shots being fired.

“Why did they kill my brother? It is a crime,” he said.

Hours later, brass shell casings were still scattered outside the home, and the building’s heavy door — which residents said was battered down during the raid — lay out front.

Blood was streaked and smeared across the kitchen floor, where relatives of the two slain men — whom they identified as Mohammed al-Karkhi and his houseguest Abu Karar — said they had been killed.

Later, grieving friends and family carried al-Karkhi’s body in a plain wooden coffin along the street for burial, chanting “there is no God but Allah.” An older man at the head of the procession fired shots from an assault rifle into the air.

Abu Mustafa said the soldiers also arrested his cousin, an Iraqi soldier from an intelligence unit. Brimley did not confirm any arrests, and the Iraqi military did not respond to requests for comment.

According to a U.S.-Iraqi security pact that went into effect Jan. 1, U.S. forces no longer operate freely in Iraq and must coordinate their activities with Iraqi forces. Although their combat role in Iraq has shrunk, American forces can still take part in raids or patrols alongside their Iraqi counterparts, sometimes in the role of trainers or providing intelligence.

In a statement for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for U.S. forces to convert to Islam and join in traditional fasting.

“Fasting is required by both Muslims and infidels, but fasting would not be valid for infidels unless they become Muslims,” he said in the statement posted on his Web site. “So once again I invite the infidels, specially the occupying forces, to become Muslims.”

Al-Sadr, whose Shiite militia fought U.S. troops intermittently until a cease-fire about a year ago, also called for continued “peaceful and religious resistance.”

Elsewhere in Iraq, eight people were killed in the northern city of Kirkuk when a car being rigged with a bomb apparently exploded prematurely, Kirkuk police chief Brig. Gen. Jamal Tahir said. One person was wounded.

Tahir said the car was parked in the yard of a house owned by a Sunni tribal leader, which a new family had moved into three days ago. An investigation is under way, but it appears the new occupants of the house were installing the bomb in the vehicle when it went off, destroying the house, Tahir said.

In other violence in Iraq, a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi patrol in the Abu Ghraib district of Baghdad, killing one soldier and injuring two others, a Baghdad police official said.

In the north, an Iraqi army colonel was killed by a bomb attached to his car in the insurgent stronghold of Mosul, according to an official in the provincial operations command.

The two officials asked not to be identified because they were not allowed to speak to the media.

Associated Press Writer Yahya Barzanji contributed to this report from Sulaimaniyah.