BAGHDAD, April 10: Two US air strikes in Baghdad’s embattled Sadr City district on Thursday killed six people as fighting flared for a fifth straight day between militiamen and security forces, officials said.

Violence in other parts of the Iraqi capital and across the country killed another eight people, among them a policeman and a soldier, security and medical officials said.

An air strike mid-morning in the heart of Sadr City on a building crammed with oxygen cylinders — which can be used to make roadside bombs — killed two people and wounded four, the officials said.

They added an earlier air raid, around midnight, killed four and wounded six near Al-Albaith mosque in the centre of Sadr City, stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr.

Among those killed were two brothers, both adults, according to the security officials. Residents of the sprawling eastern Baghdad district which has been under a vehicle curfew since March 28 reported sporadic firefights punctuated by mortar fire through the morning and into the afternoon.

A reporter who toured Sadr City in the afternoon said sporadic gunshots could be heard from some blocks of the district and several blast holes were in the ground where roadside bombs had been set off.

Around 70 people have been killed and scores wounded since fresh clashes broke out in Sadr City on Sunday, according to security and medical officials.

The US military says it is chasing “criminals” firing rockets into Baghdad and the heavily-fortified Green Zone where the Iraqi government and US embassy are based.

A US embassy official said military operations in Sadr City were succeeding in pushing back the rocket and mortar teams and that the heavy barrages of projectiles which had bombarded the Green Zone since March 23, killing two civilians and two US soldiers and wounding dozens, had subsided.

“Some rockets came in on Wednesday, but they were not very accurate,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

“We’re pushing them back, making it more difficult for them to hit us.

We’re making it difficult for them to work on their aim,” the official said.

At least 12 US soldiers have been killed in Baghdad since Sunday, most of them in Sadr City, according to a tally based on American military statements.

They have been killed in different incidents by rockets, roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades or small arms fire.

Fears of a resurgence in violence in Iraq are running deep after Sadr threatened on Tuesday to end the truce his feared Mahdi Army militia has been observing since August because of government attacks on his militiamen.—AFP