(dpa) - Four US soldiers and a family of five were killed in separate overnight attacks in Baghdad, the US military and police said Monday, a day after violence left at least 60 people dead across Iraq.
The soldiers were killed and another was injured while on patrol in southern Baghdad at about 10 pm Sunday night, the military said. The killing brings the death toll among US soldiers since the 2003 Iraq war to 4,000.
About two hours earlier, a mortar shell fell on a house in Sadun area in central Baghdad, killing a family, including the parents and three children, the Voices of Iraq news agency said quoting police sources.
Residential areas in Karada district in central Baghdad were also attacked by mortar shells, killing two people and injuring seven, the police sources said.
Rockets and mortar shells fell Sunday evening on the fortified Green Zone, home to the US embassy and other foreign embassies as well as Iraq's parliament and cabinet. Reports on damages and casualties were not immediately available.
The attacks on the Green Zone follow clashes over the last weeks between US and Iraqi forces and loyalists of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, despite a ceasefire which he declared last year and extended for another six months in February.
The cleric's political al-Sadr bloc threatened Sunday to stage protests and sit-ins in response to what it says is a campaign by US and Iraqi forces targeting its members. The bloc calls for the release of detained members.