The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Baghdad

Two US soldiers among 300 people were killed in violence continues in Baghdad and Mehdi army gunmen impose control on Basra.

The U.S. military says two American soldiers have been killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad.

A statement says the Multi-National Division - Baghdad soldiers died at about 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. It gives no further details on the location. But the attack occurred in a mostly Shiite area that has seen fierce clashes this week.

An Associated Press count shows that at least 4,007 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, including the latest deaths. Violence continues in Baghdad and Mehdi army gunmen impose control on Basra.

More than 300 people have been reported killed and many hundreds wounded in the five days of fighting across southern Iraq and Baghdad. Health workers say hospitals are overflowing and understaffed in Sadr City and a ring of Iraqi and U.S. forces around the area makes it impossible to evacuate the wounded.

Reuters report adds: Iraqi authorities on Saturday extended a curfew in Baghdad indefinitely in an attempt to contain clashes between Shi'ite militants and Iraqi security forces that have threatened to spiral out of control.

But in an indication that the violence was set to continue, Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers not to lay down their weapons, defying a five-day-old crackdown by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has ordered them to disarm.

The latest violence has spread from the southern city of Basra through towns in Iraq's southern Shi'ite heartland and neighborhoods of Baghdad.

"Moqtada al-Sadr asks his followers not to deliver weapons to the government. Weapons should be turned over only to a government which can expel the (U.S.) occupiers," Sadr aide Hassan Zargani told Reuters by telephone.

Maliki has staked his authority on disarming Sadr's followers with a major military operation. But his forces have made little progress driving fighters from the streets and instead have provoked rebellion in towns across the south.

The prime minister initially gave Sadr's followers in Basra 72 hours to disarm, but with little progress on the ground he extended the deadline until April 8.

The curfew in Baghdad, imposed on Thursday, was due to expire early on Sunday.

"To defeat the terrorist groups, the outlaws and the criminal gangs and to preserve the souls of our citizens, we extended the curfew in Baghdad indefinitely for people, cars and motorcycles," said a statement from the Iraqi security forces.

In a sign of the escalating stakes, Maliki called Sadr's fighters "worse than al Qaeda," the Shi'ite government's hated Sunni Arab foes. Sadr's followers are fellow Shi'ites who helped install Maliki in power in 2006 and backed him until last year.

The fighting has all but wrecked a ceasefire Sadr declared last year, which U.S. commanders had credited for calming Iraq. Instead, U.S. troops have been drawn deeper into what started as an Iraqi-led operation. U.S. forces in Baghdad said they killed 48 militants in a series of gun battles and air strikes across the capital the previous day.

In Basra, U.S. warplanes have carried out air strikes directed by teams of U.S. or British troops on the ground.

A British military spokesman confirmed there were more U.S. air strikes in Basra on Saturday. At one house, a Reuters photographer filmed wrecked walls and blood pouring into a sewer after grieving relatives said a bomb had killed seven people.