Casualty Count

Shiite militia fighters stormed a state TV facility in the southern city of Basra on Sunday, forcing Iraqi military guards surrounding the building to flee and setting armored vehicles on fire.

Shiite militiamen in Basra openly controlled wide swaths of the city on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Iraqi government forces sent five days ago to wrest control from the gunmen, witnesses said, as Iraqi political leaders...

Federal investigators called at least nine current and former employees of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction before a grand jury in Richmond on March 18, and the FBI has summoned others for questioning this week...

Sure enough, one was driving an American-issue Iraqi army Humvee - one of seven, said the squad's leader, Haji Ali, handed to them by sympathisers within the Iraqi army.

The U.S. military says 16 enemy fighters have been killed in airstrikes supporting Iraqi troops during clashes with Shiite militiamen in Basra. Military spokesman Maj. Brad Leighton says an AC-130 gunship strafed heavily armed militants...

After failing to break the resistance of Shiite militias in the five-day siege of oil rich Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki sent a top general to hold talks with his Shiite rival, Muqtada al Sadr, Saturday night only to be rebuffed...

British troops became involved in the intense fighting in Basra last night as clashes continued between Iraqi government forces and Shia militia. The army launched artillery shells at a mortar position of the Shia Mahdi Army...

A feisty Muqtada al-Sadr, making his first public appearance since May, said in a TV interview aired Saturday that he was in almost total control of the Mahdi Army and that the "liberation" of Iraq was his militia's chief goal.

Soldiers now raiding areas controlled by the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shia cleric Muqtada Al Sadr spent months rehearsing the assault in a simulated environment created by the British army, according to military officials.

The U.S. State Department on Saturday tightened restrictions on embassy staff in Baghdad, ordering all employees to sleep inside reinforced structures and to use only armored vehicles when traveling in the Green Zone due to incoming rocket fire.

Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has told his followers not to lay down their arms, rejecting a demand by the Iraqi government which launched a crackdown against them this week, a top aide said on Saturday.

wo Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldiers were killed when their vehicle was struck by an improvised-explosive device in eastern Baghdad at approximately 5:30 p.m. March 29.

Two Iraqi policemen were killed after being attacked by unknown gunmen in the city of Mosul northern Iraq, an Iraqi police source told KUNA on Saturday.

Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr sent a defiant signal to Iraq's government today, urging militiamen fighting Iraqi and U.S. forces to reject calls to disarm as American airstrikes continued.

some 40 policemen in Sadr City handed over their weapons to militant radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's local office, one of the policemen told The AP today. "We can't fight our brothers in the Mahdi Army, so we came here to submit our weapons,"

Turkey's army killed 15 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq on Thursday using long-range land weapons, it said on Saturday. The armed forces followed up the attack on the Kurdish separatists based...

The southern Iraqi city of Basra came under fire from U.S. warplanes on Saturday as Iraqi security forces struggle in their battle against militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The airstrikes, which killed at least 8 civilians...

As U.S. forces are drawn further into renewed fighting, the potential for deepening chaos in Iraq is raising questions about whether the Bush administration made a wise decision or a costly miscalculation in backing an Iraqi government offensive...

The gunfire struck like thunderclaps, building to a steady rhythm. American soldiers in a Stryker armored vehicle fired away from one end of the block. At the other end, two groups of Shiite militiamen pounded back with heavy machine guns...

Spc. Joshua A. Molina, 20, of Houston, Texas, died Mar. 27 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, Vilseck, Germany.