IRAQ: Iraqi police and residents say seven people have been killed in a raid by U.S. forces on a Shi'ite area south of Baghdad

Iraqi police and residents say seven people have been killed in a raid by U.S. forces on a Shi'ite area south of Baghdad. U.S. forces raided a Shi'ite area south of the capital Baghdad early on Saturday (September 22), killing seven people and detaining 12 others, residents and police said. Residents said that U.S. paratroopers raided the Shi'ite district of Jilawiya in the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad at 0300 a.m. local time (2300GMT), besieging the district and raiding a number of houses using sniffer dogs. "They (U.S. soldiers) entered the house and started to shoot, then they handcuffed me and took me away," said Mustafa Ali Hassan, whose father was killed during the raids. "Then they handcuffed my father and led him outside. We heard screaming and gunfire. They killed him on the spot," he said. Two houses were blown up by the U.S. raiding forces. U.S. military could be immediately reached for comment or further details of the raid. Also on Saturday, U.S. forces raided Baghdad's sprawling slum of Sadr City, detaining four civilians, residents of the poor slum said. They said that U.S. soldiers entered the city on foot backed by tanks in the early hours of Saturday. "U.S. forces entered the city on foot and tanks and they crashed all the vehicles and in the morning people woke up screaming," said a woman from the impoverished city, home to more than two million Shi'ite people in the eastern edge of Baghdad. At least eight vehicles were damaged during the raid, residents said. Four civilians were reported detained during the raid of the city, a stronghold of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army . The U.S. military could not be reached for comment U.S. forces have raided the Mehdi Army stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad repeatedly in the past weeks, targeting fighters they say have links to neighbouring Iran. Sadr, a youthful cleric with a mass following among Iraq's impoverished urban Shi'ites, set up the Mehdi Army in 2003 after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It has thousands of members.

ITN Source | September 23, 2007

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