Kidnapped British journalist freed in Basra

The government is demanding that al-Sadr disband his Mahdi Army, which has strongholds in Baghdad’s sprawling Sadr City neighborhood, the port city of Basra and other locations in southern Iraq.

Sporadic clashes have continued in Baghdad, where Iraqi and U.S. troops have confronted the Mahdi Army. Dozens have died in the daily violence in the capital’s eastern districts during the past two weeks.

A large section of a market area in eastern Baghdad was set ablaze early Monday when a bomb exploded next to a convoy of U.S. military vehicles driving down a commercial thoroughfare.

The U.S. military said none of the soldiers involved was seriously hurt in the 2 a.m. blast. More than a dozen U.S. and Iraqi firefighting vehicles rushed to the scene to put out the fire, which continued until morning.

Later in the day, another roadside bomb in downtown Baghdad killed five people and wounded nine, police said. The blast missed a police patrol but hit a passing minibus, said a police officer who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The U.S. military said militants firing rocket-propelled grenades ambushed an American patrol in eastern Baghdad late Sunday night. Fire from armed helicopters and an Abrams tank repulsed the attack, killing six of the gunmen, the statement said.

In northern Iraq, meanwhile, a parked car bomb exploded near an Iraqi army convoy in the Rabiaa area west of Mosul, police chief Col. Mutlaq al-Shimmari said. Ten soldiers died and seven were wounded.

Elsewhere, a suicide bomber blew himself up during a funeral for a Shiite family, killing three people and wounding 10 in the northern city of Tal Afar, Mayor Najim Abdullah said.

Elsewhere in Iraq, U.S. soldiers discovered a mass grave near Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, the military said Monday.

The grave site, which was unearthed Sunday, contained 20 to 30 badly decomposed bodies that appeared to have been buried nearly eight months, according to the statement. It said the remains would be moved to a nearby cemetery.

It was the latest in a series of mass graves discovered as U.S. and Iraqi troops clear former insurgent strongholds amid improved security, allowing stepped-up patrols.

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