More than 20 Iraqis hurt after missiles fired near hospital

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. military on Saturday fired missiles at a target about 50 yards away from the general hospital in Baghdad's Sadr City district, wounding more than 20 people and destroying ambulances, hospital officials said.

Dr. Ali Bustan al-Fartusee, director general of Baghdad's health directorate, told The Associated Press that 23 civilians were injured.

He said no patients in the hospital were hurt, but that some of the wounded included civilians outside on their way to visit patients, and that around 17 ambulances were damaged.

Earlier, hospital officials said 28 people were injured; the reason for the discrepancy was not immediately known.

The missile were fired from a launcher on the ground, the U.S. military said. It said in a press release that it destroyed a "criminal element command and control center" with missiles in northeastern Baghdad — where Sadr City is located — around the same time Iraqis reported the attack near the hospital.

The U.S. military also said that American forces "only engage hostile threats and take every precaution to protect innocent civilians."

Shiite extremists are known to have operated in a building next to the hospital, according to local reporters.

The attack left a crater just outside the concrete barriers of the hospital and badly damaged several ambulances and some other vehicles, AP Television News footage showed. The explosion also demolished a brick building.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have been locked in street battles with Shiite militias since late March in Sadr City, a Baghdad slum of 2.5 million people and the base of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army.

More than 100 people have been wounded in clashes Friday and Saturday in Sadr City, Iraqi health officials said

The U.S. military said Saturday that 10 militants were killed in fighting on Friday, including a sniper and a triggerman accused of planting armor-piercing roadside bombs in Sadr City and the adjacent Ubaydi area. U.S. forces used aircraft and an Abrams battle tank in Friday's attack, the military said. Iraqi health officials said about 75 people were wounded in those clashes.

U.S. soldiers killed four militants early Saturday elsewhere in Baghdad, the military said.