Reuters witnesses said the US strikes had killed two toddlers in the poor district, the main stronghold in Baghdad for the Mehdi Army, a Shi’ite militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi police said 13 people had been killed and 69 wounded.
The bodies of the toddlers, one in a nappy, lay on blankets in the morgue of Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City where doctors tended to wounded men, some elderly, and boys.
In a house where one of the children lived, a man pointed to bloodstained mattresses and blood-splattered pillows, choking back tears as he held up a photo of one of the dead.
“Ground forces reported they were unaware of any innocent civilians being killed as a result of this operation,” the military said in a statement.
Abdul-Mehdi al-Muteyri, a senior Sadr official, called the attack “simply barbaric”.
