BAGHDAD -- U.S. soldiers arrested a police lieutenant suspected of working for an Iranian-backed militia after a firefight in Baghdad yesterday that left six Iraqi police officers and seven gunmen dead.
The troops were ambushed from rooftops, a church and a police checkpoint during their pre-dawn raid in eastern Baghdad meant to apprehend the lieutenant, who American authorities believe was funded by an Iranian security force. The soldiers called in fire from a fixed-wing aircraft, aiming directly in front of a police checkpoint that was the source of a small-arms barrage.
The U.S. military said the airstrike was meant as a warning and the soldiers had tried to avoid hurting any policemen.
"Coalition forces returned fire in accordance with escalation of force rules," the military said in a statement. "Initial reports indicate that approximately seven terrorists and six Iraqi police were killed in the firefight."
The military described the suspect as a leader of the Special Groups, an alleged offshoot of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which U.S. officials believe receives backing from Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
The military accused him of coordinating logistical support from Iran for militants and leading cells that attack U.S. forces with armor-piercing bombs and mortars and rockets.
An Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, labeled the shootout a "misunderstanding," adding that three Iraqi policemen were killed and nine others wounded. He said he didn't know whether any police officers had been arrested. The clash occurred at 2 a.m. near a checkpoint in the center of Baghdad.
The incident came the day after a Bush administration assessment on Iraq's political, economic and security progress reiterated that Iraq's forces were still troubled by sectarianism and militia infiltration.
"The fact of the matter is that there are elements of the Iraqi police and elements of Iraqi army that are infiltrated, and the Iraqi government is working very hard to work their way through that," Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a news briefing yesterday in Washington.
Yesterday, at least three mortar rounds slammed into Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, the site of the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government offices, where U.S. civilian government employees have been required in recent days to wear body armor and helmets because of the rising threat of rocket and mortar attacks. Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and one injured in the attack, an Iraqi security official said. Firetrucks and police cars raced through the zone, and helicopters swooped overhead in the aftermath of the bombardment.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said during the briefing with Pace that he expected mortar and rocket attacks to intensify through September, when a critical evaluation by U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and ground commander Gen. David Petraeus would be submitted to Congress.
The attacks come from both Shiite Muslim and Sunni Arab areas but are thought to originate more frequently from districts considered strongholds of Shiite militants. The Americans regularly blame Iran for arming Shiite extremists in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said a reputed leader of al-Qaida in Iraq surrendered to U.S. forces and Iraqi troops at the Baghdad airport yesterday. The man was blamed for car bombings and mortar attacks in western Baghdad and in hot spots such as Mahmoudiya just south of the capital, the military said without giving further information.
Twenty-one bodies, most with gunshot wounds, were dumped around Baghdad yesterday, most of them in the western half of the city.
An additional five corpses were found in the northern town of Amerli, where a devastating suicide truck bomb crumbled buildings and killed at least 150 people Monday, residents said.
Ned Parker writes for the Los Angeles Times.