Baghdad - At least 11 people, including women and children, were killed and 27 wounded on Wednesday when mortar shells struck the Shiite Sadr City area of east Baghdad, witnesses said. Mortar shells hit a funeral, killing eight and injuring 27, witnesses told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. A few minutes later, a mortar shell hit a house in the same district, killing a woman and her two children.
Loud explosions were heard in Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and US helicopters were striking the area which has been encircled by US and Iraqi troops for nearly two weeks.
Fatah al-Sheikh, a Shiite Sadrist, told
