A mortar barrage slammed into a mainly Shiite east Baghdad neighborhood Sunday, killing 12 and wounding 31, police said, and a major battle raged north of the capital where residents of a Shiite city were fighting what police said was a band of al-Qaida in Iraq gunmen, according to AP. Women and children were among the dead and wounded in the Baghdad mortar attack, and some houses in the neighborhood were damaged, according to police. The victims were taken to Ibin al-Nafis and Sadr hospitals, police said. Witnesses said U.S. helicopters were hovering above the attack site. Hussein Saadon, 56, an owner of a small minibus station in the Ubaidi neighborhood, was soaked in blood after he drove four victims to the hospital. «The attack occurred before noon. We heard sounds of four or five explosions, one after the other which hit central Ubaidi. We rushed to the place of the attack and we saw several houses which were hit. Two were badly damaged. «We also saw a damaged car on the main street where one of the rockets landed. Two dead bodies were inside the car beside other wounded people,» he said. In Khalis, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad, police said more than 1,500 people including sheiks and dignitaries had gathered near city hall to launch the counteroffensive against al-Qaida fighters who have been regularly firing mortars into the town and kidnapping residents at illegal checkpoints. At least seven people were killed and 18 wounded in a mortar attack on Khalis on Saturday.
