The United States military fired rockets at a target near a hospital in eastern Baghdad on Saturday, wounding 20 people. No patients were wounded at the hospital in the Sadr City stronghold of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, but 20 people at the scene of the blasts were wounded.
Iraq’s prime minister has raised the stakes in his showdown with followers of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, saying in an interview broadcast on Monday they would be barred from elections unless their militia disbanded. The comments followed raids on Sunday by security forces into the cleric’s Baghdad stronghold, the slum of Sadr City.