BAGHDAD: More than 37 people were killed in Baghdad's Shi'ite militia bastion of Sadr City yesterday, as gunmen clashed with US soldiers under cover of a severe sandstorm. Several rockets or mortar rounds also struck the Iraqi capital's heavily fortified government compound, as militants took advantage of the absence of US air cover during the storm, witnesses said.
In one of the most intense firefights in weeks, the American soldiers killed 28 militants in Sadr City, stronghold of anti-American cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, the military said.
Four US soldiers were also wounded in the fighting.
The fighting erupted when a US patrol was targeted with small-arms fire that wounded one soldier.
As the soldier was being evacuated, a US vehicle was struck by two roadside bombs, small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.
Residents said US forces also launched two air strikes in the area which heavily damaged four houses.
North of Baghdad, in the town of Mukhisa in Diyala province, a female suicide bomber killed two members of a local anti-Qaeda group, the US military said.
Further north, around the oil city of Kirkuk four people were killed and 15 wounded in two bomb attacks.
A bomb in a shop in the city centre selling Iraqi military equipment killed three civilians and wounded seven, he said.
A second bomb north of the city killed a civilian and wounded eight people, three of them soldiers from a passing patrol that was the target of the attack.
Meanwhile, Iraq's deputy prime minister says government will pursue its war on militias but must avoid isolating the movement of Al Sadr or pushing his followers into the arms of groups bent on chaos.
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih said the government had to distinguish between Sadr's mass movement and so-called "special groups", which the US military says are rogue Mehdi Army elements backed by Iran.
The UN Gulf War reparations body paid a further $972.4 million (BD367m) for losses due to Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait, bringing the total to $24.4bn (BD9.2bn), it said.
The payments included some compensation for environmental damage inflicted on Iraq's neighbours during the seven-month occupation which began in August 1990.
Kuwaiti companies and state entities received the lion's share of the latest round of compensation, $725.1bn, followed by Saudi Arabia ($148m), the US ($76m) and Turkey ($23.3m).
Separately, UN High Commissioner for Refugees said only four per cent of Iraqi refugees surveyed in neighbouring Syria have plans to return to their homeland.
Nearly 90pc have no plans to return, while the remaining six per cent don't know , a spokeswoman for the agency said.
An Army sergeant kicked a wounded and unarmed Iraqi insurgent for fun, shot him and then told a soldier to place a gun beside him, another soldier testified in the sergeant's military trial.
l A European Parliament delegation urged EU countries to accept more asylum seekers from Iraq, during a visit to Jordan, which hosts hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees.
