3,500 U.S. troops to head home from Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A "surge" brigade deployed to Iraq last year is heading back to the United States, the U.S. military said Monday.

About 3,500 soldiers from the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team will go back to Fort Benning, Georgia, over the next few weeks. It is the third surge brigade to leave Iraq, as planned, and two more are scheduled to leave by the end of July.

The U.S. troop increase in 2007, referred to as the surge, was designed to take on the insurgency in and around Baghdad and provide stability for Iraqi politicians to develop legislation and reach accommodation on key national issues.

"The continued drawdown of surge brigades demonstrates continued progress in Iraq," said Gen. Dan Allyn, chief of staff of Multi-National Corps - Iraq.

The troops went to Iraq in March 2007 to fight insurgents near Baghdad, east of the Diyala River.

The soldiers improved security, captured more than 600 insurgents, found many weapons, helped lower the number of attacks, assisted merchants in reopening shops and aided the local government authorities, the military said.

"I'd say we achieved mission success," said Col. Wayne W. Grigsby Jr., brigade commander.

After the surge brigades return to the U.S. in July, commanders will determine future deployments after a 45-day pause.

Meanwhile, a wanted militia leader in Baghdad's Sadr City died of wounds he received in a weekend strike, an official representing anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said Tuesday.

Arkan al-Hasnawi, a senior leader with al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, died Monday morning after he was injured Saturday in a coalition strike near a hospital in the war-torn Baghdad neighborhood, the official said.

Al-Hasnawi was in a vehicle near al-Sadr Hospital when he was struck in what Sadrists are calling an airstrike. The U.S. military said the strike came from a ground-based guided multiple launch rocket system.

The U.S. military said it targeted a "criminal command and control center" near the hospital. Iraqi officials said the strike left dozens wounded, including members of the hospital staff, and damaged the hospital. A U.S. military spokesman could not confirm that al-Hasnawi was among those killed in the operation.

The Sadrist official said al-Hasnawi was a senior leader with the Mehdi militia and was in charge of Shaab and Husseiniya, two Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad. Wanted posters had been put up for him throughout Sadr City.

The U.S. military in October issued a news release that said al-Hasnawi was responsible for the kidnapping of Shiite and Sunni tribal leaders from Diyala province.

They said he was one of the insurgents from "Special Groups" -- the term the military used to describe Iranian-backed militants that flouted what then was al-Sadr's efforts to promote a cease-fire.

Witnesses told CNN a funeral was held in Sadr City on Monday for al-Hasnawi, and hundreds of people attended.

Since the end of March, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers have been fighting Shiite militants in Sadr City, which has been a bastion of support for the Mehdi Army and al-Sadr. The violence has left nearly 1,000 dead and more than 2,000 others wounded, according to Iraqi government figures that count mostly militant and some civilian casualties.

The nonstop clashes in the sprawling, tightly packed slum are some of the most violent fights in the more than five-year-old Iraq war.

In the latest fighting, Iraqi security forces and U.S. soldiers killed approximately nine insurgents and discovered weapons caches overnight in and near Sadr City, the U.S. military said.

The fighting has spread to other Shiite enclaves in the capital and raged in other parts of Baghdad on Tuesday.

A Katyusha rocket hit a house in eastern Baghdad Tuesday evening, wounding at least five civilians, including a woman, according to an Interior Ministry official.

Earlier in the day, mortars struck the Baghdad municipal building, killing at least three people and wounding 10 others, an Interior Ministry official said. That's where the city mayor and other city employees work in central Baghdad.

Mortar fire also struck a residential area in western Baghdad, wounding 12 civilians, and slammed into a college in central Baghdad, wounding five people, the ministry official said.

Three people were killed and nine others were wounded in clashes between National Police and Shiite militia members in southern Baghdad, the ministry official said. A female university student was among those killed in the fighting, which took place in Abu Dsheer.

There was also violence outside Baghdad.

In the Diyala province, gunmen stormed the house of a tribal leader, and kidnapped him, his wife, his daughter-in-law and granddaughter, the Interior Ministry said.

A U.S. soldier in northern Iraq was killed and another injured Tuesday "in an insurgent attack against the soldier's patrol," the U.S. military said.

The number of U.S. troops killed this month in Iraq stands at seven; the number of U.S. service members killed in the war is 4,072, including eight civilian employees of the Defense Department.

Police in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul said three alleged prostitutes were shot dead on Monday, and the U.S. military said police believe al Qaeda in Iraq -- the Sunni group -- conducted the attack. Two other people were wounded.

In Tikrit, also in northern Iraq, a parked car bomb blew up Tuesday outside a restaurant patronized by police officers, killing four people and wounding 27, an Interior Ministry official said. Police were among the casualties.

The U.S. military, which confirmed the attack, said that while insurgents are attempting to operate in the area, "overall attacks have decreased dramatically."

The U.S. military "detained 15 suspected terrorists, including two wanted individuals" while targeting al Qaeda in Iraq operations.

CNN's Jomana Karadsheh and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

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