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Near Sadr City, U.S. troops await attack

Jan- 8-2007 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

By WILL WEISSERT, The Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — A mock bumper sticker affixed to a door in the headquarters building of a U.S. outpost in eastern Baghdad proclaims "I Love Sadr City." Soldiers smile when they see it. They know the opposite is true.

During one tense mission recently, U.S. Army soldiers rolled up to the edge of the Shiite slum in hulking Stryker armored vehicles. They never set foot inside, but they still got a sharp reaction.

A burst of gunfire rang out moments after soldiers got out, prompting one squad to take cover in the home of an unemployed man named Abdul-Kareem Hassan Dhamin.

More shooting followed, but then, just as suddenly, it stopped.

Residents, accustomed to darting indoors during bursts of gunfire, peeked out and re-emerged. A line formed at a bread shop, and women with laundry baskets on their shoulders walked down the street. A man herded goats through a vacant lot strewn with trash.

Sadr City could prove the toughest nut to crack as the Bush administration appears ready to send thousands more soldiers to the capital to have a fresh run at pacifying the capital, where insurgent and militia violence has raged for months.

Iraqi government officials have said their troops, which are preparing to take on Sunni neighborhoods, will largely leave Sadr City to American forces and the Iraqi army's Special Operations Command division.

During the recent U.S. mission, some squads conducted house-to-house searches while a group of soldiers holed up on the second floor of Dhamin's home, peering across a street and over a wall into Sadr City.

Much of the area is a slum, and there was little to look at but empty lots and crumbling hovels — though apartment buildings rose in the distance, providing ample cover for snipers.

Some soldiers crouched on the roof, using towels and blankets to create small barriers and make themselves harder to see. Another group moved into a second-floor bedroom. [...]

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