Word: baghdad
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...platoon across once perilous terrain, Lieutenant Colonel William Zemp was quick to praise Iraqi troops. Less than six months ago, this farming village near the town of Mahmudiya - about 50 miles south of Baghdad - was prime al-Qaeda territory, and a target for numerous raids. On this day, however, small groups of children poked their heads out of doorways to wave; an army medic checked an old woman in a wheelchair; and two families invited the troops to lunch. None of this would have been possible, Zemp said, without the efforts of the newly strengthened Iraqi Army...
...Despite meeting powerful resistance from the Mahdi Army, and suffering the desertion of roughly 1,300 soldiers who refused to fight, the Iraqis' performance was commended by the U.S. as a show of their newfound competence. "Iraqi forces are taking the lead," Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll told journalists in Baghdad last week...
...Sadr City, the militia's base in east Baghdad, heavy fighting erupted again Saturday night as the Mahdi Army continued street battles with Iraqi forces backed by U.S. airstrikes and American ground troops. At least 13 were reported to have died in overnight clashes...
...cleric's demand, issued late Saturday night in Iraq, amounted to his toughest talk yet in the crisis, which began late last month when Iraqi forces attacked al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in a bungled Basra operation. Fighting continued since then in Baghdad and areas of southern Iraq where the Mahdi Army has a strong presence. Officials in the Maliki government said Iraqi security forces swept into the section of Basra controlled by the Mahdi Army without resistance Saturday as U.S. and British bombs fell in the area in support of the operation...
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Iraq. News of her arrival in Baghdad quickly spread through the city, where sandstorms swirled late in the day. Residents near the Green Zone heard at least one explosion in the vicinity of the compound, which has been bombed repeatedly by Mahdi Army fighters since the crisis began. Rice, who was traveling in the Middle East to attend regional conferences, told reporters she came to Iraq because she wanted to highlight what she described as political progress made by the Iraqi government towards reconciling the country's violently...