Troops battle militia in Iraqi neighborhood

BAGHDAD -- U.S. helicopters blasted rooftops in a Shiite neighborhood before dawn Friday as American troops battled gunmen on the ground, killing at least eight by the military's count. Shiites claimed some civilians died and radicals castigated Iraq's government as being too weak to rein in the Americans.

The U.S. military said the battle in Baghdad erupted when a U.S. Army patrol came under fire shortly after midnight from gunmen on rooftops in Shula, a rundown Shiite neighborhood that is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Troops called in attack helicopters, which raked the rooftops with automatic weapons fire, a U.S. spokesman, Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, said.

During the battle, U.S. helicopters from the 1st Air Cavalry Brigade also fired on about a dozen armed militiamen "moving toward coalition forces" in Shula, the military said in a statement.

The military first reported eight dead, then raised the figure to 18, but later returned to the lower figure, explaining that the changes were due to confusion on the battlefield.

Bleichwehl said all the dead had been "identified as hostile" and there was "no collateral damage," the U.S. term for civilian casualties.

With the Sunnis estranged, violence is also on the rise in Iraq's predominantly Shiite south, where rival groups are vying for political power.

Elsewhere, the U.S. command said Iraqi troops and U.S. special forces had raided a home in the Hit area, 85 miles west of Baghdad, on Wednesday and seized an al-Qaida suspect believed to have shot down a U.S. helicopter in 2004. A "second person of interest" also was detained, it said.