DPA
Baghdad, May 4 (DPA) Five US soldiers were killed in two attacks in Iraq, US military said Sunday, while in the southern city of Basra the Iraqi army blew up a mosque housing the headquarters of the Shia Thaarallah party. The US military said four Marines had been killed Friday by a roadside bomb in the western Anbar province, and another soldier died that evening when a roadside bomb struck a patrol in eastern Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Iraqi and US troops continued their onslaught on militiamen from Mahdi Army of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in eastern Baghdad’s Sadr City slum area.

The US military said it struck with precision-controlled munitions “a criminal element command-and-control centre” in Sadr City Saturday.

The military uses the term “criminal elements” to refer to Iranian-backed Shia gunmen.

The missiles reportedly fell near a hospital, wounding civilians, according to witnesses.

In Basra, the Iraqi army blew up a Shia mosque housing the headquarters of Thaarallah party, witnesses told DPA.

The Iraqi army ordered local residents living close to the mosque in Nuab al-Dubat to keep away while it blew up the mosque, the witnesses said.

Security officials told the Voices of Iraq news agency that the destruction of the mosque came after troops found weapons and explosives there.

The leader of the party, Yusif Sinawi, had been arrested in April following clashes between security forces and his guards. He has allegedly been involved in paramilitary activities, killings and abductions in Basra.

Thaarallah was established in 2005 as a local party operating mainly in Basra, 550 km south of Iraq.
DPA