SUGARKLED

Dvnroa

Reuters

BAGHDAD - A British journalist held for two months by kidnappers in the southern Iraqi city of Basra was rescued on Monday by Iraqi forces sweeping through the city in a crackdown on militants, the Iraqi military said.

Richard Butler, a photographer on assignment for the US network CBS, appeared to be in good health and high spirits after his release. Unknown militants had seized Butler and his interpreter from their hotel in the centre of Basra. The interpreter was freed within days.

"The Iraqi army stormed the house and overcame my guards and then burst through the door," said Butler, smiling broadly and surrounded by Iraqi officials in pictures shown on Iraqiya state television.

"I had my hood on, which I had to have on all the time. And they shouted something at me and I pulled my hood off."

"We are incredibly grateful that our colleague, Richard Butler, has been released and is safe," CBS said in a statement.

The rescue was a triumph for Iraqi forces, embarrassed last month by a hasty crackdown against militants in Basra that triggered fighting across the south and Baghdad while failing to dislodge masked militiamen from the streets.

But the news came after a night of renewed clashes in Baghdad's Sadr City slum that dashed hopes of its 2 million residents of a let-up in three weeks of fighting.

Angry mourners carried a coffin containing the body of a man killed in the clashes through the slum's streets. A hospital said seven wounded casualties had arrived overnight. Residents swept out the rubble from freshly damaged buildings.

US forces said they had killed six gunmen in an overnight battle in eastern Baghdad, returning fire with M1 tanks and helicopter gunships at fighters who attacked a patrol with rocket-propelled grenades.

Although the US forces did not identify the location of the battle, the unit they described operates near Sadr City.

Elsewhere in the capital, an explosion in central Baghdad's Tayaran Square killed five people and wounded nine, police said, and an overnight roadside bomb attack on a US patrol set a market ablaze.

Poor planning

US commanders have criticized the planning of the March crackdown in Basra, led personally by Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. On Sunday the Iraqi government fired 1,300 soldiers and police for failing to stand and fight.

The crackdown has pitted Iraqi, US and British forces against the Mehdi Army militia loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, leading to Iraq's heaviest fighting since the first half of 2007.

The rescue operation should help Maliki make his case that his Basra operation has not been a failure.

He has always described it as a crackdown against criminal gangs that controlled the city's streets.

The kidnapping of Butler, one of the few Westerners who dared to venture out in Basra in years without a military convoy, was a symbol of the rampant lawlessness in a city that controls Iraq's only port and 80 percent of its oil revenue.

Basra has been quieter in recent days and the Iraqi forces have been conducting raids in militia-controlled neighborhoods.

But the fighting has continued in Sadr City, the main base in the capital for masked Mehdi Army gunmen.

After three weeks trapped in the battle zone amid nightly bombardment, residents had hoped for a break in the fighting when the government lifted a vehicle blockade on Saturday. But a relatively quiet Sunday ended with more fighting overnight.

"We heard the sound of bombing and clashes after midnight. It lasted for around an hour and then it stopped. American planes were hovering in the sky until morning," said grocer Ali Sittar.