BAGHDAD: Iraqi and US forces fought a deadly gunbattle with Shiite militiamen after launching an overnight raid on an impoverished eastern Baghdad district, defence ministry and militia officials said on Monday.
In a spate of rebel attacks, 11 people, including six Iraqi soldiers and two policemen, were killed across Iraq.
Separately, the US military announced the deaths of three of its soldiers southwest of Baghdad yesterday in a roadside bomb attack.
The gunbattle, which pitched Iraqi forces and US advisers against the Mehdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, was the first such clash since US reinforcements began rolling into Baghdad to quell a brutal sectarian war.
Mohammed al-Askari, a spokesman for the Iraqi defence ministry, said, "Our forces, supported by multinational forces, headed to a target based on certain intelligence information to arrest three wanted men."
"As they arrived, they received fire, so they responded to protect themselves and protect people from these terrorists. Now everything is quiet," he said, explaining that there had been talks with local leaders.
"The fight continued for two hours. As a result two militiamen were killed and three others wounded. Two Iraqi soldiers were wounded," a defence official said.
Staff at the district's Imam Ali hospital said three civilians were killed, including a woman and a three-year-old girl and 18 wounded.
The raid on the area, a stronghold of the firebrand cleric, was accompanied by air strikes.
