[NYTr] Attack at US-run base south of Baghdad kills 5

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP - Oct 15, 2007
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=PAREA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

5 Iraqi civilians, including 2 children, killed in attack at U.S-run
base south of Baghdad

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Shiite militiamen attacked a military base south of
Baghdad and U.S. helicopters fired back during clashes Monday that
killed five Iraqi civilians, including two children, and wounded 17,
according to police. The U.S. military said it was looking into the
report.

The fighting in Diwaniyah, a mainly Shiite city 80 miles south of
Baghdad, began when fighters from the Mahdi Army militia fired at least
a dozen mortar rounds at the base, according to a police officer who
spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety.

Eight of the mortar rounds landed on the base, but there was no
immediate word on military casualties or damage.

The four other mortar rounds hit the city's nearby joint security
center, which is run by Iraqi, U.S. and Polish forces. Mahdi Army
fighters emerged from alleys and swarmed the building, the police
officer said, adding the clashes lasted about 30 minutes.

Diwaniyah has in recent months been the scene of frequent clashes
between rival Shiite factions competing for influence in the oil-rich
region that's home to Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines in the cities
of Najaf and Karbala, visited by millions every year.

The Mahdi Army is nominally loyal to anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr, but breakaway factions have been blamed for much of the recent
violence as many fighters became disaffected with his orders to stand
down during a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown aimed at ending sectarian
violence.

Also Monday, a Catholic priest in Mosul said two other priests from his
church had been released a day earlier, hours after they were kidnapped
on their way home from a funeral in northern Iraq. The priest requested
anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media and the
report could not immediately be verified.

Pope Benedict XVI made a public appeal in Rome on Sunday for the
release of the two priests who were ambushed, dragged out of their car
and taken away. The pope asked the kidnappers to "let the two religious
men go" during his traditional Sunday blessing to pilgrims and tourists
gathered in St. Peter's Square.

The Christian community in Iraq is about 3 percent of the country's
estimated 26 million people.

Also Monday, a court-martial began for a former commander of U.S.
military police at the detention facility in Baghdad where Saddam
Hussein was housed until his execution last December.

Lt. Col. William H. Steele, a U.S. Army reservist from Prince George,
Va., already pleaded guilty at a pretrial hearing Oct. 7 to three of
seven charges he faces. They carry a maximum sentence of six years in
prison, forfeiture of pay and dismissal from the Army, according to the
U.S. military. He also pleaded not guilty to the remaining charges of
aiding the enemy by providing an unmonitored cell phone to prisoners,
giving special privileges to detainees, acting inappropriately with an
interpreter and failing to obey an order, the military said. If
convicted, Steele could face life in prison.

On Sunday, a bomb in a parked car struck worshippers heading to a
Shiite mosque in Baghdad, killing at least nine people as Iraqis
celebrated a Muslim holiday, while the death toll rose to 18 in a
coordinated suicide truck bombing and ambush in the northern city of
Samarra on Saturday.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks in Baghdad and Samarra,
but they bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq militants who had
promised an offensive during Ramadan to undermine U.S.-Iraqi claims of
success in quelling the violence in the capital with an 8-month-old
security operation.

Also killed on Sunday were a U.S. soldier struck by a roadside bomb
during combat operations in southern Baghdad and an Iraqi journalist
who was shot while on assignment for The Washington Post elsewhere in
the capital.

Salih Saif Aldin, 32, a Washington Post correspondent who wrote under
the name Salih Dehema for security reasons, was killed in the
neighborhood of Sadiyah, according to a statement from the newspaper.
It said details of the incident were still unclear.

Another U.S. soldier died in a non-combat related incident in the
northern Ninevah province, the military said.

© 2007 The Associated Press.