Curfew escalates chaos as Baghdad battle rages

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's prime minister Friday tightened an already draconian security clampdown in the capital in an attempt to restore order on downtown streets during an hourslong gunbattle that at times involved Iraqi and American troops fighting Shiite and Sunni Arab gunmen.

With Baghdad residents already facing a midday vehicle ban on Fridays, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared a state of emergency and ordered all residents off the streets until 6 a.m. today.

Some frightened residents were caught away from home when the expanded curfew was declared at midmorning, virtually shutting down the city.

As the gunbattle near the capital's center abated, the government shortened the curfew, ending it at 5 p.m. to allow distressed residents to return home.

The pitched fighting, which left four Shiite militiamen dead, and the chaos caused by the tightened security measures, plunged the capital into a gloom amid stifling heat. It also underscored the hurdles the Iraqi government faces in its efforts to pull back from the sectarian and insurgent violence that left dozens dead elsewhere in Iraq on Friday:

• U.S. military officials said two American troops were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb southeast of Baghdad. The military also announced the deaths of three other troops killed in the past few days.

• A bomb killed 10 worshippers at a Sunni mosque in a volatile religiously mixed agricultural region northeast of Baghdad and another killed 11 customers standing in line for gas in the southern city of Basra.

• In the northern city of Mosul, drive-by shootings have left at least 25 dead late this week.

The new Iraqi government unveiled a security plan June 14 aimed at curbing the clashes and attacks in the capital. But violence, especially in other Iraqi cities, has not abated. Perhaps the most ominous of Friday's many violent incidents began when about 10 vehicles carrying members of a Shiite militia, the Mahdi, gathered to march through a Sunni Arab neighborhood to the Shiite Buratha mosque for noon prayer services. The mosque was the site of a suicide bombing last week that killed at least 12 worshippers.

Neighborhood gunmen opened fire on the armed militiamen as they made their way through the streets, killing four, police said. Cars burned as the two groups exchanged fire. Many Iraqi officials worry such battles between young, hot-headed Shiite militiamen and Sunnis portend an all-out civil war.

In response, Iraqi and American troops were dispatched to the scene, where the battle continued along notoriously dangerous Haifa Street, near the U.S.-controlled Green Zone. Officials said three Iraqi policemen and five Iraqi soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

A Ministry of Defense official said when the Iraqi troops arrived, they confronted 20 armed militia members brandishing AK-47s and handguns despite a June 14 weapons ban.

"The clashes lasted for two hours with the gunmen," Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Mossawi said. "During the clashes, the mosques in the neighborhoods were calling through loudspeakers for calming down and respecting the rituals of Friday prayers."

By late Friday, the huge armed presence and extraordinary curfew had quieted the area.

The sudden midday pedestrian curfew came 10 days after enactment of the security measures that include a ban on car and truck traffic from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays, to prevent car-bomb attacks on worshippers at city mosques. Prime Minister al-Maliki has also deployed thousands of troops throughout Baghdad, snarling traffic at hundreds of checkpoints.

A spokesman for the U.S. military did not identify the two American soldiers killed earlier in the day southeast of Baghdad.

The military also announced the deaths of three other troops, two of them Marines, who were killed over the past several days.

A military spokesman said one Marine died Thursday while conducting operations in the western Anbar province, and another died Wednesday in the same area.

A Baghdad-based soldier died Wednesday in a noncombat incident, the spokesman said. The deaths raise to at least 2,517 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war began.

Meanwhile, the American military said it killed four foreign insurgents in a raid north of the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah. The military said two of them had suicide bombs strapped to their bodies.

Also yesterday, al-Qaida's No. 2 leader paid tribute to the slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a video Friday, extolling him as "the prince of martyrs." In the video on Al-Jazeera television, Ayman al-Zawahri called al-Zarqawi — who was killed in a June 7 U.S. airstrike — "a soldier" and "a hero."

The deputy al-Qaida leader did not mention the new head of al-Qaida in Iraq which the group has declared to be Abu Hamza al-Muhajer.

The omission of any reference to the successor might mean the tape was recorded before the successor was chosen, or it could indicate al-Zawahri does not endorse the new leader.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.