Fourteen killed in Iraq clashes

Ambulances were hit in the US strike near the hospital, medics said

US and Iraqi soldiers have killed 14 suspected Shia militants in Baghdad during the night, the US military said.

In the Shia stronghold of Sadr City, 20 people were also injured in a US missile strike on a building next to a hospital, medical officials said.

The US military said in a statement it was targeting what it described as "known criminal elements".

A US soldier died in a roadside bomb during a combat patrol in Baghdad, the US military also said on Saturday.

The US military said 10 militants had been killed in fighting late on Friday in and around Sadr City and another four early on Saturday elsewhere in the capital.

A number of vehicles and buildings were destroyed in the clashes, Iraqi police said.

In the missile strike, Dr Wiam al-Jawahri, director of the General Hospital in Sadr City, told the BBC four rockets were fired from helicopters into the neighbouring building, damaging it and destroying 11 ambulances and several staff cars parked nearby.

He said many of the windows in his hospital had been broken and patients had been moved to other wards.

The US military said it had fired missiles at a target a few metres away from the hospital.

American and Iraqi troops have been fighting militiamen in Sadr City - a stronghold of the militia loyal to anti-US cleric, Moqtada Sadr - for weeks, with hundreds of people killed.