US strike takes out suspected militant hideout in Sadr City ("command-control center" near hospital)

AP on Yahoo ^ | 5/3/08 | Bradley Brooks - ap

[NormsRevenge]

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military fired guided missiles into the heart of Baghdad's teeming Sadr City slum on Saturday, leveling a building 55 yards away from a hospital and wounding nearly two dozen people.

Separately, the U.S. military said late Saturday that four Marines were killed on Thursday by a roadside bomb in Anbar province. The military also said that a U.S. soldier died of wounds suffered in a roadside bomb that struck the soldier's vehicle during a combat patrol in eastern Baghdad Friday. At least 4,071 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

AP Television News footage from Sadr City showed several ambulances destroyed and on fire, thick black smoke rising from them as firefighters worked to put out the flames.

The strike, made from a ground launcher, took out a militant "command-control center," the U.S. military said. The center was located in the heart of the eight-square-mile neighborhood that is home to about 2.5 million people. Iraqi officials said at least 23 people were wounded, though none of them were patients in the hospital.

The U.S. military blamed the militants for using Iraqi civilians as human shields.

"This is a circumstance where these criminal groups are operating directly out of civilian neighborhoods," military spokeswoman Spc. Megan Burmeister told The Associated Press in an e-mail.

She said it presents a "complex and very difficult" challenge for U.S. forces to strike the militants when they are "putting themselves next to municipal buildings."

Dr. Ali Bustan al-Fartusee, director general of Baghdad's health directorate, told the AP that 23 civilians were wounded in the strike.

He said no patients in the hospital were hurt, but that some of the wounded included civilians outside on their way to visit patients in the hospital. He also said 17 ambulances were damaged or destroyed.

AP Television News footage showed about 100 people milling about in the rubble of the destroyed building. A deep crater was seen just yards from the hospital, which is surrounded by 15-foot-tall concrete blast walls. It appeared that one section of the blast wall was leveled.

Windows were blown out of cars in the hospital's parking lot, but there did not appear to be any damage to the hospital itself.

Shiite extremists are known to have operated in a building next to the hospital, local reporters said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have waged street battles with Shiite militias since late March in Sadr City, the power base of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.

The fighting is part of a 5-week-old crackdown by the Iraqi government and U.S. forces on Shiite militia factions. The clashes have brought deep rifts among Iraq's Shiite majority and have pulled U.S. troops into difficult urban combat.

Militia members have been blamed for firing hundreds of rockets or mortars from Sadr City into the Green Zone, the U.S.-protected area housing the American embassy and much of the Iraqi government. In the past month, more than a dozen people — including two American civilians and two U.S. soldiers — have been killed inside the zone during the attacks.

In response to the shelling, American and Iraqi troops in recent weeks have moved into Sadr City, hoping to push the militants far enough from the Green Zone so their rockets and mortars would be out of range.

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, shows no indication of easing the pressure on militia groups, including the powerful Mahdi Army led by al-Sadr. Al-Maliki has been seeking to increase leverage on Iran, which is accused of training and arming some Shiite militia groups. Iran denies the claims.

A five-member Iraqi delegation returned from Tehran Saturday from a meeting aimed at halting suspected Iranian aid to militiamen.

Ranking deputy Khalid al-Atiyah said the Iranian government had expressed its readiness to assist the Iraqi government" against the extremists and "in its security measures." He did not elaborate.

During clashes over the past two days in Sadr City, at least 100 people have been killed, Iraqi health officials said.

Also Saturday, the Turkish military claimed air strikes it carried out earlier this week in northern Iraq killed more than 150 Kurdish rebels. The military said it successfully hit all its targets in a three-hour air operation on Mount Qandil early Friday.

The leadership of the Kurdish rebel group is believed to be hiding in the Qandil region — about 60 miles from the Turkish border.

In northern Iraq, Ahmed Danaf, the head of external relations for Kurdish group, claimed in a phone call that the raid killed six members of the Free Life Party, the anti-Iran Kurdish group PEJAK.

Georgian Defense Ministry spokesman Giga Tatishvili said two servicemen from the ex-Soviet republic were killed and one wounded south of Baghdad on Friday when a parked car bomb exploded. The deaths were the first combat fatalities the nation's military has suffered in Iraq, where it has had a presence since August 2003.

[NormsRevenge]

A boy examines an ambulance destroyed in an apparent U.S. airstrike in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq on Saturday, May 3, 2008. More than 100 people were also wounded in clashes Friday and Saturday in Baghdad's embattled Sadr City district, Iraqi health officials said. A U.S. helicopter on Saturday allegedly fired a missile at a target some 50 meters away (yards) from the general hospital in Sadr City, wounding about 28 people and damaging at least seven ambulances, hospital officials said.The U.S. military had no immediate comment about the incident. (AP Photo/ Karim Kadim)

[NormsRevenge]

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, shows no indication of easing the pressure on militia groups, including the powerful Mahdi Army led by al-Sadr. Al-Maliki has been seeking to increase leverage on Iran, which is accused of training and arming some Shiite militia groups. Iran denies the claims.

A five-member Iraqi delegation returned from Tehran Saturday from a meeting aimed at halting suspected Iranian aid to militiamen.

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Looks like Maliki is flipping the militants the "purple finger". ;-)

[BurbankKarl]

Oh, more Red Crescent munitions transports. Pali-tactics in Iraq.

[Bender2]

Too bad AP writer Bradley Brooks was not visiting his good buddies at the militant “command-control center” when the air strike hit, so he could put even more of his personal anti-American, Liberal Democrat spin on this story.

[Tut]

I wonder who all was in that building that the U.S. decided to take out that building at that moment? I assume they knew of that building’s importance before today.

[NormsRevenge]

Maybe MuQQty was there for a check-up. There had been rumors of health problems not so long ago.

[MonicaG]

Once again, THANK YOU to our most excellent military for taking out the trash... God bless!

[Polybius]

The U.S. military fired guided missiles into the heart of Baghdad's teeming Sadr City slum on Saturday, leveling a building 55 yards away from a hospital and wounding nearly two dozen people.

The U.S. is now fighting as it did in World War Two.

(We won in World War Two.)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Roggio says that the Hospital is basically run by the Sadrists...so take what they say with a bunch of salt...:

GMLRS strike knocks out Special Groups command center in Sadr City [Bip!]

***********************EXCERPT INTRO************************

The Long War Journal ^ | 5/3/2008 | Bill Roggio

The US army targeted and destroyed a Special Groups command and control center with Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System in Sadr City at 10 a.m. Saturday morning, Multinational Forces Iraq reported. "There were six GMLRS rocket strikes on these Special Groups criminal command and control nodes," Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover, the chief Public Affairs Officer for Multinational Division Baghdad, told The Long War Journal while refuting claims that the US used aircraft to attack. "We conducted a precision strike, hopefully got a few leaders, and sent a very strong message."

The Special Groups have been using the location near the hospital for an extended period of time and US intelligence has followed the activities at this site. "We had been tracking it for some time," Stover said. "Operations made the call to hit it. There may have been damages to the hospital - broken glass. There was likely ambulances damaged; however, it was the Special Groups criminal leadership that purposely put their command and control node there."

The Special Groups are a subset of the Mahdi Army that receives backing from Iran's Qods Force, its foreign clandestine operations wing that has supported Shia terror groups in Iraq. The Mahdi Army and the Special Groups have intentionally fought amongst the civilian population and use civilians as human shields in an attempt to inflate civilian casualties and create a media backlash against Iraqi and US operations.

The Rusafa health department media director claimed 28 Iraqi were wounded in the strike, and nine ambulances and 40 civilian vehicles were damaged. The Sadrist bloc ran the Health Ministry prior to withdrawing from the government in 2007, and the hospitals in Sadr City are known to be infiltrated with Mahdi Army and Sadrist bloc members. The Mahdi Army used hospitals as staging areas for sectarian attacks and weapons storage depots.

Construction on the Al Qods barrier continues

[Lancey Howard]

The strike, made from a ground launcher, took out a militant "command-control center," the U.S. military said.

I'll trust that the US military hit this "command-control center" at a time when it was packed liked sardines?

[NormsRevenge]

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/products/GuidedMLRSXM3/index.html
videos at the link

a pretty precise weapon,, helluva shot!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I’ll look at it tomorrow,..shutting down here....nite!

[Shery]

“He also said 17 ambulances were damaged or destroyed.”

This seems like an unlikely number of ambulances for an Arab hospital.

[NormsRevenge]

G’nite. The videos are real short.

I got my 2nd wind late tonight, had to nap for awhile today, we were tuckered after sailing in today, gonna need a couple days to get my land legs back and get over cigar abuse to my throat and lungs.. ;-)

[NormsRevenge]

“He also said 17 ambulances weapons and munitions delivery vehicles were damaged or destroyed.”

--

How's that? ;-)

[dixiechick2000]

"Looks like Maliki is flipping the militants the "purple finger". ;-)"

Yes! It surely does!

Thank you for posting this article.

Bill Roggio's LWJ is reporting great news, too.

[dixiechick2000]

Thank you for your post, Ernest!

Bill Roggio needs wide coverage!

[dixiechick2000]

I love you guys, and your toys!

Thank you for the link!

[NormsRevenge]

Marines love their toys... and sharing them too..