 US forces killed over 40 Iraqi rebels in raids and air strikes near Baghdad, the military said on Monday, but leading clerics from the Sunni minority accused the Americans of an "atrocity" that killed two dozen civilians. Two US helicopter crew were killed when their aircraft was shot down during the battles on Sunday in the rural area around Latifiya and Yusufiya, south of the capital, where the military has said Al Qaeda leader Abu Mussab Zarqawi has been active.
| That's the Association of Muslim Scholars, providing their usual bitch. We must have gotten some fairly valuable hard boyz for them to squawk so loud. |
The US military said its troops killed 41 people over the preceding two days, all of them insurgents, referred to either as "Al Qaeda associates" or "terrorists." In doing so it lost its second helicopter in the area in six weeks. Among those killed, according to a military statement, was a man suspected in the shooting down of a helicopter on April 1.
| Here's hoping he died slowly, in a lot of pain. |
US military statements said several women and children were "inadvertently wounded by shrapnel" and treated in the site or evacuated, but made no mention of civilians being killed. But the Muslim Clerics Association, which has often been sharply critical of the occupying forces, said 25 civilians were dead in the US action: "We hold the Iraqi government and the occupiers responsible for this brutal atrocity."
| Hold and be damned, then. |
In recent weeks, US commanders have announced raids on suspected bases around Yusufiya for Sunni Al Qaeda fighters, describing some as staging areas for the sort of bomb attacks on Baghdad that killed more than 30 people on Sunday.
| Those weren't "atrocities," y'see. That's "resistance," or maybe "freedom fighting." |
US officers have accused Zarqawi of trying to foment civil war and to derail Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Maliki's effort to form a national unity government with Sunnis and Kurds. A series of bloodless bombings of small Shiite shrines northeast of Baghdad on Saturday raised fears of the sort of sectarian backlash provoked by the destruction of a major shine in February that was blamed on Al Qaeda — though it denied it. |