DPA
Baghdad, April 30 (DPA) A Sadrist leader in Iraq said Wednesday that at least 500 people have been killed, most of them women and children, and 2,000 wounded in the ongoing intense clashes between militants and Iraqi forces in Sadr City since March 25. Fatah al-Sheikh, a Sadrist leader, told DPA that the situation in Sadr City is “dramatic” and “a crisis is widely anticipated in the city amid a governmental total silence.”

US air raids on the city continued between late Tuesday and the early hours Wednesday amid intense clashes between militants and Iraqi forces, al-Sheikh said.

The Sadrist leader stressed that the militants engaged in clashes with the Iraqi troops do not belong to the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to the radical Shia cleric Moqada al-Sadr.

He added that the Sadrist movement plans to issue a statement Sunday to explain the violent acts taking place in the city.

Al-Sheikh said reports about finding Iranian weapons in the Sadr City were correct, adding that the al-Sadr movement fears that foreign sides could be sponsoring militants in the area.

Sadr City inhabitants were moving from the area due to the continuous clashes and violence, al-Sheikh said.

On Tuesday, at least 28 people were killed during clashes in Sadr City.

Meanwhile, two members of the Awakening Councils were killed and another one was wounded when a road bomb went off in Abasy area in the Northern city of Tikrit, Iraqi police sources said.
DPA