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Gunmen Attack TV Station in Baghdad
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Seven mortar rounds landed in the overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood of Shula in northern Baghdad, killing five civilians, the Interior Ministry said.
Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said Thursday that attacks in Baghdad had climbed 15 percent in the past two weeks. Caldwell tied the increased violence to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in about two weeks.
"We assume it will still get worse before it gets better,'' Caldwell said. The death toll in Baghdad has more than doubled since summer, with Health Ministry officials reporting 2,600 civilians killed in the capital last month.
In the town of Hamza, about 110 miles south of Baghdad, police reported that about 30 detainees, most or all members of the Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army, were freed from a provincial prison by attackers armed with grenades and guns.
In a statement, Moqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shiite cleric whose political bloc commands the Mahdi Army, renounced attacks blamed on his militia. "Even though this has not been proven, if it is proven, I will announce their names and declare my excommunication of them," he said.
Sadr said he spoke out "to safeguard the reputation of this dear, doctrine-following army."
Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
