47 killed in Baghdad; U.S. forces target militias

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Two American soldiers were killed, seven Shiite construction workers were gunned down and five Sunni civilians were blown up Saturday in Baghdad, deepening the capital’s security crisis. At the same time, Shiite politicians called on the prime minister to cancel his visit to Washington in protest of Israel’s attacks in Lebanon.

Elsewhere, U.S. and Iraqi forces backed by a helicopter gunship launched a major attack Saturday on a headquarters of a radical Shiite militia south of Baghdad, killing 15 militiamen in a three-hour battle, the U.S. said.

Early today, a car bomb exploded at an eastern Baghdad market, killing 33 people, police said.

One U.S. soldier died in the second of two roadside bombs that exploded in east Baghdad at mid-morning Saturday. An Iraqi civilian was killed by the first blast, police said. Another U.S. soldier died Saturday evening when gunmen attacked his patrol with small arms fire, the military said.

The seven Shiite workers were killed and two were wounded when gunmen opened fire on a construction site near Baghdad International Airport, police said. Later Saturday, a mortar shell killed five civilians at a market in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Amil in west Baghdad, police said.

With violence rising, the United States is moving to bolster American troop strength in the Baghdad area, putting on hold plans to draw down on the 127,000-member U.S. military mission in Iraq.

U.S. officials have pointed to Shiite militias as a major cause of sectarian violence. In a bid to curb militia influence, American troops moved Saturday against the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad.

U.S. troops reported killing 15 gunmen in a three-hour firefight in Musayyib but described them only as “thugs and criminals” who had tried to take over the city. Sheik Jalil al-Nouri, an aide to al-Sadr, said U.S. and Iraqi forces attacked the Mahdi Army office in Mussayib.

Local officials said the Americans conducted a similar raid on al-Sadr’s office in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad and scene of an attack five days ago that killed 50 people.

The security crisis in Baghdad is expected to figure prominently when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets President Bush at the White House on Tuesday. U.S. officials are expected to push al-Maliki, a Shiite, to move quickly to calm sectarian tensions and abolish Shiite militias blamed for much of the violence.

But the visit comes amid rising anger among Iraqis over Israel’s attacks in Lebanon, launched after Shiite Hezbollah militiamen seized two Israeli soldiers.

On Saturday, the Fadhila party, which is part of al-Maliki’s Shiite alliance, urged the prime minister to call off his visit.

“Fadhila demands that the prime minister cancel his visit to the U.S. in solidarity with the Lebanese people and over what is going on there, the disasters due to the Zionist aggression amid international silence about these crimes,” party official Sheik Sabah al-Saiedi said.