BAGHDAD (AFP) – The Iraqi capital was steeped in blood yesterday as a fledgling truce in a Shiite rebel bastion was shattered by running battles that officials said had resulted in scores dead, while 14 US soldiers were killed in the space of 24 hours.

The US toll in Iraq was closing in on 1,000 dead since the military’s invasion in March 2003 as soldiers killed in Iraq climbed to between 995 and 997 fatalities, according to the Pentagon’s figures.

US aircraft pounded the rebel citadel of Fallujah late Tuesday, killing up to 100 insurgents, the US marines said, while gunmen kidnapped two Italian women aid workers and two Iraqis from their offices in Baghdad.

Fierce clashes raged in Sadr City, an AFP correspondent said, with smoke billowing over parts of the over-populated Baghdad slum and jets roared above.

The health ministry said 40 Iraqis were killed and more than 270 wounded in overnight fighting between US forces and combatants loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr.

Sadr aide Sheikh Naim al-Qaabi said 15 Mehdi Army fighters were killed and 62 wounded.

“Last night was the most intense shelling of Sadr City since the Americans arrived in Iraq,” he said, adding that heavy aircraft fire lasted from 11:00 pm (1900 GMT) to 4:00 am.

US army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel James Hutton reported several bomb and small arms attacks on US forces in Sadr City overnight and said two US soldiers were killed there yesterday.

One more US soldier was killed by small arms in western Baghdad, the military said.

The US military also reported the deaths of four other troops in separate attacks in the Baghdad area and one north of the capital on Monday, bringing the total number of soldiers killed to almost 1,000 since the March 2003 invasion.

The same day, the US military had suffered its worst single human loss in months when a car bomb ripped through a joint convoy, killing seven marines and three Iraqi national guards near Fallujah.

Suspected Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi’s group claimed the bombing, as well as the downing of a drone flying over Fallujah, in a video obtained by AFP.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld noted yesterday that the US death toll in Iraq will soon surpass 1,000, but insisted the country was better off than before the US-led invasion in March 2003.

Yesterday’s clashes marked the deadliest combat in the Baghdad neighbourhood since April, bringing to an abrupt end a lull in fighting between the Mehdi army and US forces that followed Sadr’s call last week for a ceasefire and pledge to join the political arena.

The rebel Iraqi city of Fallujah came under heavy artillery fire and air strikes late yesterday, sending families fleeing. The US military said up to 100 insurgents died in the bombardment, a reprisal for attacks on marine positions outside the city.

Clouds mushroomed over the city and people fleeing the chaos spoke of corpses and wounded left behind.