Iraq's hardline Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Friday called upon his followers and security forces to stop the bloodshed a week after he warned of "open war" against the government.

"I call upon my brothers in the army, police and Jaish al-Mahdi (Mahdi Army) to stop the bloodshed," Sadr said in a statement read out at a Baghdad mosque during Friday prayers.

On 19 April he threatened to launch all-out war against the Iraqi government amid continuing clashes between Shiite militiamen, mostly from his Mahdi Army, and US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad's Sadr City.

On Friday Sadr said his threat was aimed at American forces. "When we threatened an open war, it was meant against the occupation and not against our people," he said in the statement.

Sadr's latest call came as fierce clashes in Sadr City — bastion of his Mahdi Army — killed 11 people and wounded 32 overnight, a local medic said on Friday.

The US military said its troops killed 10 "criminals" in northeast Baghdad where Sadr City is located. The impoverished district is home to some two million people.

The Sadr City medic said the dead included four old men, two women and a child. Women and children were also among the wounded, he added. The US military gave a different version of the clashes.

It said in a statement to AFP that in the first incident at around 6pm (3pm GMT) on Thursday, a group of US and Iraqi soldiers was attacked with 60mm mortar rounds. "A three-man mortar team was engaged and killed," it said.

At around 10pm, an aerial weapons team (AWT) spotted two people digging in the ground to plant bombs.

"The AWT engaged them with a Hellfire missile and killed the two." At 1am on Friday, an AWT spotted four people placing bombs and a Hellfire missle was fired at them, killing them, the statement said.

Thirty minutes later the AWT saw two people setting up a rocket-firing position. They were "engaged with a Hellfire missile" and one was killed. The other fled, the military said.

"The AWT could not engage the second criminal due to a suspected concentration of innocent civilians in the area adjacent to the building."

American and Iraqi forces have fought fierce street battles in Sadr City with militants, mostly from the Mahdi Army, since 25 March when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown in the southern city of Basra.

That operation triggered clashes in other Shiite areas, especially in Sadr City. Since then at least 383 people have been killed in Sadr City, according to an AFP tally based on figures from Iraqi and US officials.

The US military says that the Sadr City operation is aimed at stopping rocket and mortar attacks from the district targeting the Green Zone, seat of the Iraqi government and foreign embassies.

On Thursday, one person was wounded when a rocket hit the Polish embassy there. Sadr's supporters claim the troops have virtually laid siege to the district, however.

"People are dying every day because of the siege. Parliament must oppose the operation and call for it to be halted immediately," Falah Shanshal, a lawmaker from Sadr's parliamentary bloc, told the assembly on Thursday.

But US Major General Jeffery Hammond, commander of US forces in Baghdad, dismissed such claims.

"Our purpose is to secure only the southern part of Sadr City, to prevent rockets being fired towards the Green Zone from the area," he told reporters.

Hammond said current military operations, which include building a wall dividing the southern and the northern section of the district, aimed to prevent "criminals and terrorists" firing rockets and mortar rounds.

He gave an assurance that the wall would be limited to the southern sector, about a third of the sprawling district which he said was the source of the rocket fire. "We have no plans to go further."

US commanders said this week that almost 700 rockets and mortar rounds were fired in Baghdad in the past month — 114 of them hitting the highly fortified Green Zone.

They said 82 percent of the rockets and mortar bombs that hit the zone came from Sadr City. General Abud Qanbar Hashim, Iraqi commander of Baghdad Operations Command, also denied that Iraqi troops have laid siege to Sadr City.

"Sadr city is not under siege," he told Thursday's joint news conference with Hammond.

AFP