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Iraqi and US forces launched a major assault to wrest control of a central Baghdad district from insurgents after US President George W. Bush urged Americans to back a make-or-break security plan for Iraq.
US officials were meanwhile investigating the deaths of five security contractors who died a day earlier in east Baghdad, US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters.
On Haifa Street, ground troops, armoured vehicles and Apache attack helicopters launched “Operation Tomahawk Strike 11,” US and Iraqi officials said.
The Sunni Arab rebel stronghold was the site of three previous battles this month, including one on January 9 that involved 1,000 US and Iraqi troops in which 50 insurgents were killed, according to Iraqi defence sources.
Machine-gun and mortar fire echoed for more than three hours starting before dawn, followed by a lull and then sporadic bursts from light and heavy weapons.
US aircraft patrolled relentlessly over the area.
Iraqi and US troops “killed two terrorists and arrested 11 of various nationalities,” an Iraqi defence ministry statement said.
The US military said that “coalition and Iraqi forces were engaged by an enemy mortar team before daylight broke on Baghdad” and responded with mortar fire of their own.
After dawn, “troops met enemy resistance, including hand-held grenades, small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades from high rise buildings in the area.”
The joint force responded with everything from assault rifles to mortars and helicopter gunships.
The operation was “aimed at rapidly isolating all active insurgents and gaining control of this key central Baghdad location,” a US statement said.
Six “terrorists” and three other suspects were arrested and large caches of weapons seized inside Al-Karkh Middle School on Haifa Street, a defence ministry source said.
The battle erupted just hours after Bush pleaded with a war-weary US public to give his disputed Iraq strategy a chance, warning that defeat would see the entire Middle East caught up in an “epic battle.”
“For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective,” Bush said in his State of the Union speech.
Two weeks after unveiling a strategy centered on sending 21,500 more soldiers into battle, the president gave no ground, urging opposition lawmakers and the public to give his plan “a chance to work.”
“On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle,” Bush insisted.
Before he spoke, the man tapped to lead the US mission, Lieutenant General David Petraeus, told a Senate committee: “The situation in Iraq is dire, the stakes are high.”
The Haifa Street assault appeared to underscore the determination of Bush and embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to crush insurgent groups and militias which have fueled sectarian violence for a year, killing tens of thousands of Iraqis.
The street lies within two kilometres (just over a mile) of the heavily fortified Green Zone, the seat of Maliki's government and the US embassy.
The US ambassador said authorities were investigating the deaths of five US security contractors in east Baghdad Tuesday.
“We had a very bad day yesterday. We lost five fine men,” Khalilzad said in reference to the deaths of the five employees of Blackwater USA, a prominent company that protects US embassy personnel in Iraq.
“I had travelled with the men who were killed and had gone to the morgue to view the bodies,” he said, adding “it was difficult to know exactly what happened because of the fog of war.”
North of Baghdad, US forces raided what they termed “a known terrorist safe house” and captured three suspects, but killed a 12-year-old boy.
At least 22 other Iraqis were killed in attacks, including four members of a single family in Kut, southeast of Baghdad, security sources said.
Two US marines also died in the western Al-Anbar province, and a soldier was killed in Baghdad, military statements said, taking US losses this month to 53 and to 3,059 since the 2003 invasion.
