A car bomb exploded on Tuesday near a park popular with young soccer players, killing at least 18 boys in a city west of Baghdad known as a centre of the Sunni insurgency, police said. The bomb-rigged car blew apart in central Ramadi late Tuesday afternoon while the boys were playing, and police said those killed were ages 10 to 15. US and Iraqi forces staged raids in Baghdad’s main Shi’ite militant stronghold on Tuesday as part of politically sensitive forays into areas loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Southwest of the capital, three American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb.Troops have held back on broad sweeps through the teeming Sadr City slums since a security operation began earlier this month, targeting militant factions and sectarian death squads that have ruled Baghdad’s streets.Al-Sadr withdrew his powerful Mahdi Army militia from checkpoints and bases under intense government pressure to let the house-to-house security sweeps move ahead. But Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and others have opposed extensive US-led patrols through Sadr City, fearing a violent backlash could derail the security effort. The pre-dawn raids appeared to highlight a strategy of pinpoint strikes in Sadr City rather than the flood of soldiers sent into some Sunni districts.At least 16 people were arrested after US-Iraqi commandos — using concussion grenades — stormed six homes, police said.The US military said the raids targeted “the leadership of several rogue” Mahdi Army cells that “direct and perpetrate sectarian murder” — an apparent reference to Shi’ite gangs accused of carrying out execution-style slayings and torture on Sunni rivals.The three soldiers killed on Tuesday, assigned to a unit based in the capital, were killed by an improvised explosive device, a makeshift mine that is the deadliest killer of US soldiers in Iraq.Meanwhile, more bombings struck central Baghdad on Tuesday. At the popular Kabab Abu Ali restaurant, a bomb left in a plastic bag exploded during the busy lunch hours, killing at least three people and injuring 13. About the same time, a suicide bomber struck an area filled with restaurants and ice cream parlors. At least five people were killed and 13 injured, police said.
