U.S., Iraqi troops raid Shiite slum in Baghdad

updated 2:58 p.m. ET Feb. 7, 2008

BAGHDAD - U.S. and Iraqi troops raided Baghdad's largest Shiite slum early Thursday and arrested 16 people, American and Iraqi officials and witnesses said. The U.S. military said one of the detainees later died.

The military also announced the death of a U.S. soldier killed by a roadside bomb a day earlier in western Baghdad. At least 3,950 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In Sadr City, the U.S. said it was targeting "criminal elements" responsible for mortar and bomb attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops.

U.S. Navy Cmdr. Scott Rye, a military spokesman, said a man who fired on the troops died after he was shot and taken into custody. He said an Iraqi woman also was shot but was treated on the site and released.

Local police said two women and an elderly man also were wounded and taken to the hospital, where one of them died. Rye said the military had no information about two women or an elderly man being wounded in the operation.

Police and residents said American soldiers in Humvees backed by helicopters sealed off a block of the neighborhood and raided four houses. The front door lock on one of the houses was shattered by gunfire, and 22-year-old Arkan Abid Ali was shot in the chest and wounded, witnesses said.

Diaa Shakir, 20, said he heard gunfire coming from inside houses that U.S. soldiers had entered as he watched the operation from the window of his home nearby.

Ali was one of 16 Iraqis, including three teenage boys, detained by U.S. forces, an Iraqi police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

U.S. raids area known for poor, insurgents  
Sadr City is home to about 2.5 million of the Iraqi capital's poorest residents. Overwhelmingly Shiite, the neighborhood has also been a base for the Mahdi Army loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The firebrand figure called a cease-fire for the militia in August, but some rogue members are believed to have ignored the order. The area has been the frequent site of U.S. raids over the past several months.

Al-Sadr's office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf released a statement Thursday threatening to expel militiamen who break the cease-fire.

"We have nothing to do with anyone from the Mahdi Army who violates the cease-fire with armed activities. They will be considered out of the organization," the statement said. "You all must know that our goal is independence."

Al-Sadr's cease-fire order is credited along with last summer's arrival of about 30,000 additional U.S. troops with helping tamp down violence in Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi officials are hopeful that the cleric will continue to order restraint among his men.

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