- BAGHDAD, Iraq - The government clamped a state of emergency on Baghdad
and ordered everyone off the streets Friday after U.S. and Iraqi forces
battled insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades
and rifles near the heavily fortified Green Zone.
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- The military also announced the deaths
of five more U.S. troops in a particularly violent week for American forces
that included the discovery of the brutalized bodies of two soldiers. Twelve
U.S. troops have died or been found dead this week.
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- The fierce fighting in the heart of Baghdad
came despite a 10-day-old crackdown that put tens of thousands of U.S.-backed
Iraqi troops on the streets as the new prime minister sought to restore
a modicum of safety for the capital's 6 million people.
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- Iraqi and U.S. military forces clashed
with heavily armed attackers throughout the morning Friday in the alleys
and doorways along Haifa Street and within earshot of the Green Zone, which
houses the U.S. and British embassies and Iraqi government headquarters.
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- Four Iraqi soldiers and three policemen
were wounded before the area was sealed and searched house-to-house for
insurgent attackers, police Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said. U.S. and Iraqi
forces also engaged in firefights with insurgents in the dangerous Dora
neighborhood in south Baghdad.
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- Deadly clashes are not new to Haifa Street,
a thoroughfare so dangerous that a sign at one Green Zone exit checkpoint
warns drivers against using the street. But Friday's fighting was unusual
in its scope and intensity, prompting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to
order everyone off all streets in the capital with just two hours notice
and while Friday prayers were still in progress.
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- Clusters of women shrouded in black head-to-toe
robes scurried along to beat the ban, and U.S. soldiers frisked men dashing
home against a backdrop of thick, black smoke rising above the white high-rise
buildings of Haifa Street.
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- Helicopters flitted back and forth overhead.
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- The state of emergency, which was to
continue for an indefinite period, included a renewed prohibition on carrying
weapons and gave Iraqi security forces broader arrest powers.
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- The U.S. military reported that two Multi-National
Division-Baghdad soldiers were killed Friday when their vehicle struck
a roadside bomb southeast of the capital. Earlier in the day, the military
reported that two Marines were killed during combat in the volatile Anbar
province Wednesday and Thursday, and a soldier died elsewhere in a noncombat
incident Wednesday.
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- Those death announcements came a day
after the military said five other U.S. troops were killed in operations
south and west of Baghdad and three days after the bodies of two soldiers
who went missing after an attack on their checkpoint were recovered.
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- http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/14891815.htm
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