- BAGHDAD (AFP) -- Several
blasts rocked Baghdad, killing seven people, including two Britons, while
clashes between US troops and Shiite militiamen left 18 people dead in
the populous Sadr City neighborhood.
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- Four people were killed and two wounded in an explosion
that destroyed an armored civilian vehicle just outside the sprawling complex
housing the US-led coalition that administers Iraq, a military spokesman
said Monday.
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- Two of those killed in the blast were British civilians,
according to the British Foreign Office.
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- "These deaths are shocking and they show the risks
that civilians and others have to take in order to assist the Iraqis in
the necessary task of rebuilding and reconstructing their country,"
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters in Brussels.
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- Another three people, including a child, also were killed
Monday in an explosion that destroyed their car only minutes before a US
convoy drove by, witnesses said.
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- Meanwhile, US troops, who have vowed to wipe out Shiite
cleric Moqtada Sadr's private army, clashed with the militia overnight
in a neighborhood of Baghdad where he has strong support.
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- Hospital officials said 18 civilians were killed in the
populous Sadr City neighborhood, but the coalition put the figure at 26
and said all were militiamen loyal to Sadr.
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- The military said US soldiers already had killed "an
estimated 21" militiamen over the weekend after coming under small
arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire in Sadr City.
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- US troops had announced the death of another 32 militiamen
Sunday in Kufa, just a few kilometers (miles) from the holy city of Najaf
where Sadr is holed up to escape arrest in connection with the killing
of a rival cleric.
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- Twenty of those killed were felled during a battle in
the compound of a Kufa mosque, the coalition said.
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- Sadr's Mehdi Army has been involved in weeks of clashes
with the occupation forces, mainly in central Iraq, after the coalition
closed down his newspaper and threatened to arrest him.
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- Some of the fiercest battles were fought in the Shiite
holy city of Karbala, but both sides moved out of the city over the weekend.
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- Coalition officials have made it clear they are determined
to wipe out the armed militia.
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- The coalition's military and civilian spokesmen have
also said they feared violence could surge further as the date for a transfer
of power nears.
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- The Coalition Provisional Authority is scheduled to hand
over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and US authorities
have insisted they intended to stick to that date despite the violence.
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- Last week insurgents carried out two attacks against
senior Iraqi political figures, killing the president of the coalition-installed
Governing Council, Ezzedine Salim, in a suicide car bombing on May 17.
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- A similar attack on Saturday wounded deputy interior
minister General Abdel Jabbari Yussef. Three guards, an unidentified woman
and the attacker were killed in the blast.
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- Salim's successor, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, said in an interview
published Monday that the coalition must grant "full sovereignty"
to the transitional government, which has yet to be formed.
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- "We will not agree to less," he told Asharq
Al-Awsat newspaper.
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- The United States and Britain were to submit to the UN
Security Council later Monday the first draft of a resolution to recognise
a new Iraqi government and clear the way for foreign forces to remain in
Iraq after the formal end of the occupation.
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- "Once we have full sovereignty, we will have the
right to decide whether multinational forces go or stay," Yawar said.
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- But he added that the lack of security "means that
we will need multinational forces ... which we hope to broaden to include
European Union troops and certain influential Arab countries."
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- He also said another two weeks were needed to set up
the transitional government amid intense negotiations involving UN envoy
Lakhdar Brahimi, the Iraqi council and coalition officials.
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reserved. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/86651/1/.html
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