BAGHDAD, May 3: The US military fired missiles into the heart of Baghdad’s teeming Sadr City slum on Saturday, levelling a building 50 meters away from a hospital and injuring dozens of people. An AP Television News footage showed several ambulances destroyed and on fire, thick black smoke rising from them as firefighters worked to put out the flames.

The US strike from a ground launcher took out a militant “command-control centre” located in the heart of the 8-square-mile neighbourhood that is home to about 2.5 million people. Iraqi officials said at least 23 people were injured, though none of them were patients in the hospital.

The US military blamed the militants for using Iraqi civilians as human shields.

“This is a circumstance where these criminal groups are operating directly out of civilian neighbourhoods,” military spokeswoman Spc. Megan Burmeister said in an e-mail.

She went on to say that it is a “complex and very difficult” challenge for US forces to strike the militants when they are “putting themselves next to municipal buildings”.

Ali Bustan al-Fartusee, director-general of Baghdad’s health directorate, said no patients in the hospital were hurt but some of the wounded included civilians outside on their way to visit patients. He also said 17 ambulances were damaged or destroyed.

The news footage showed about 100 people milling about in the rubble of the destroyed building. A deep crater was seen just meters away from the hospital, which is surrounded by 15-foot-tall concrete blast walls. It appeared that one section of the blast wall was levelled.

Cars in the hospital’s parking lot had their windows blown out, but there did not appear to be any damage done to the hospital itself.—AP