Car bomb kills 9; U.S. troops kill 17 militants

American troops killed 17 militants amid escalating fighting in Sadr City, and another U.S. soldier was killed as the military death toll increased to a seven-month high of 50.

The explosion occurred about 9:15 a.m. in a crowded commercial area in eastern Baghdad, police officials said, adding the nine killed included three women and a child. The U.S. military said no American soldiers were killed, although three were wounded in the attack.

Health officials also said clashes in Baghdad's Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City killed eight people, including two women and a child, and wounded 18 others, including women and children.

Convoys of minibuses carried several coffins on rooftops to the cemetery for burial on Thursday as their grieving relatives hugged each other in pain, AP Television News footage and AP photos showed.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has accused fighters of the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army of using residents as human shields during close combat in the teeming slum, which has become the epicenter of fighting since a government crackdown triggered clashes in late March.

In fighting late Wednesday and early Thursday in Sadr City, U.S. soldiers killed five militants before they could launch a rocket attack.

A sixth militant was killed when he attempted to recover the rockets and a U.S. attack helicopter fired a Hellfire missile to destroy the rocket.

U.S. soldiers killed three other militants who attacked American troops with shoulder-fired rockets on Wednesday evening, the military said.

An unmanned drone also fired Hellfire missile, killing two militants on a rooftop as they prepared to attack positions of U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Three militants who planted a roadside bomb were killed in another airstrike, and three other militants were killed in separate clashes. The fighting was reported in statements issued Thursday by the military.

A roadside bomb struck an Iraqi patrol car on Thursday, killing two Iraqi soldiers in the northern city of Mosul, police said.

Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a military spokesman for American troops in Baghdad, also blamed the militants for putting civilians at risk by staging attacks from populated areas.

"We will exercise all precaution when returning fire; however, we will defend ourselves against violent aggression," Stover said.

Stover blamed what he called Iranian-backed groups of launching attacks on U.S. troops, adding that U.S. troops were working hard to specifically target the enemy and avoid civilian casualties.

Baghdad sent a delegation to Tehran on Wednesday with "evidence, confessions and pictures" indicating that Iran is supplying weapons and training fighters who are locked in a violent standoff with U.S. and Iraqi troops, a government official said Thursday.

The fighting in Sadr City — a base for the powerful Mahdi Army militia — intensified after al-Sadr last week threatened to unleash an "open war" against U.S.-led forces who try to exert control, with the help of Iraqi forces, over an area containing nearly half of the Baghdad's population.

The U.S. military reported early Thursday that a soldier had been killed by an explosion Wednesday near a patrol in Ninevah Province, bringing the monthly count to at least 50 — 27 in Baghdad — in the deadliest month since September when 65 U.S. troops died.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, at least 4,062 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq, according to an Associated Press count.

Around Iraq, at least 1,080 Iraqi civilians and security forces were killed nationwide this month, or an average of 36 a day, according to an AP tally. That's down from March's total of 1,269, or an average of 41 per day.

Officials reported at least 479 deaths in Sadr City but they could not break down the number of militants, Iraqi Security forces and civilians.