Baghdad mortar attack kills 12

The U.S. military last week launched a new nationwide offensive targeting Sunni Islamist al-Qaida and Shiite militias.

Washington and the U.S. military say they fear al-Qaida and militias will step up attacks to try to influence debate ahead of a report on the Iraq war due to be presented to Congress in mid-September.

At least four mortar rounds fell in al-Obeidi, which is close to Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum and stronghold of powerful anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia. More than 40 other people were hurt.

Al-Obeidi residents reported clashes between U.S. forces and the Mehdi Army in the area after at least one U.S. vehicle had been attacked by a roadside bomb during a patrol a day earlier.

Police and residents said those clashes appeared to be separate to the mortar attack in a different area of al-Obeidi.

The U.S. military could not immediately comment on the reports of the clashes. Major-General Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. forces south of Baghdad, said he believed up to 50 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds force were in his area of command, training militia fighters to use mortars and rockets.

“We are concerned primarily about the training of Shiite extremists. We think there are about 50 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” Lynch told a news conference.

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran called Lynch’s accusations “baseless” and said they were not new.

Lynch said there had been an increase in mortar and rocket attacks on U.S. forces in his area of command and that rocket attacks were becoming “more accurate and more effective”, a fact he attributed to more sophisticated Iranian weaponry.

Washington has accused Shiite Muslim Iran of fomenting violence in Iraq through its support for Shiite militias.

Iran denies the charges and blames the 2003 U.S.-led invasion for the sectarian violence between majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs that has killed tens of thousands.

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