At least 10 people died in overnight fighting between U.S. forces and Shiite militiamen in Baghdad, six of them in Sadr City, the US military said on Monday. An Iraqi medic from Sadr City said that another 40 people, including women and children, were wounded in the clashes in the district.
A girls' school which has been shut for more than a month because of the fighting was also damaged in overnight violence, they said. The US military said six Shiite militiamen were killed in Sadr City and four in Mansur, a mainly Sunni district of west Baghdad.
At around 10:00 pm (1900 GMT) on Sunday, three militiamen died by a Hellfire missile as they prepared to launch a rocket, military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover told AFP. Twenty minutes later a US helicopter killed another militiaman who was planting a roadside bomb in Sadr City.
At around 1:00 am on Monday, two more militiamen died after a roadside bomb struck a US military vehicle in the district, Stover said. The four militiamen killed in Mansur died in a Hellfire missile strike at around 11:30 pm on Sunday after they attacked US troops with small-arms fire. Two Iraqi civilians were also wounded in the strike, Stover said.
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