U.S. & World News

BAGHDAD (CBS News) ― A mortar barrage slammed into a mainly Shiite east Baghdad neighborhood Sunday, killing 12 and wounding 31, police said, and a major battle raged north of the capital where residents of a Shiite city were fighting what police said was a band of al Qaeda in Iraq gunmen.

Women and children were among the dead and wounded in the Baghdad mortar attack, and some houses in the neighborhood were damaged, according to police. The victims were taken to Ibin al-Nafis and Sadr hospitals, police said.

Witnesses said U.S. helicopters were hovering above the attack site.

Hussein Saadon, 56, an owner of a small minibus station in the Ubaidi neighborhood, was soaked in blood after he drove four victims to the hospital.

"The attack occurred before noon. We heard sounds of four or five explosions, one after the other which hit central Ubaidi. We rushed to the place of the attack and we saw several houses which were hit. Two were badly damaged.

"We also saw a damaged car on the main street where one of the rockets landed. Two dead bodies were inside the car beside other wounded people," he said.

He said the district had been without electricity for several days and the people were suffering in the heat.

"It fills me with pain and anger to see an attack on such poor area where is no presence of police nor army bases or checkpoints," Saadon said.

In Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, police said more than 1,500 people including sheiks and dignitaries had gathered near city hall to launch the counteroffensive against al Qaeda fighters who have been regularly firing mortars into the town and kidnapping residents at illegal checkpoints.

At least seven people were killed and 18 wounded in a mortar attack on Khalis on Saturday.

Police said the city militia also said they were determined to push al Qaeda fighters out of the nearby town of Hibhib, where the terror organization's former leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in an U.S. air strike.

In Other Developments:

• In central Baghdad, gunmen driving several cars waylaid a minibus headed for Sadr City, the capital's Shiite enclave, and abducted 13 passengers.

• The country's Sunni vice president promised better treatment and a review for the inmates crowding the country's prison system in a video showing a boisterous welcome from prisoners jammed inside tarp-covered cages. In the visit to the crowded eastern Baghdad prison released on videotape Saturday, Tariq al-Hashemi said his moderate Sunni party was working to improve prison conditions and to free the innocent, though the party itself has not taken part in the Cabinet since Aug. 1. Rights groups have complained about random detentions and overcrowding in Iraq's prisons. "There is a new procedure in the works to review your files. Just be patient for a while," he told the prisoners. "Those who are outside are not much better off than you."

• American forces are tracking about 50 members of an elite Iranian force who have crossed the border into southern Iraq to train Shiite militia fighters, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said - the first detailed allegation that Iranians have been training fighters within Iraq's borders. "We know they're here and we target them as well," he said, citing intelligence reports as evidence of their presence. "They go back and forth. There's a porous border." He declined to be more specific and said no Iranian forces have been arrested in his territory. The military has stepped up allegations against Iran in recent weeks, saying it supplies militants with arms and training to attack U.S. forces. Iran denies the allegations and says it supports efforts to stop the violence.

• The French foreign minister arrived in Baghdad on a groundbreaking visit after years of icy relations with the United States over Iraq. Bernard Kouchner traveled "to express a message of solidarity from France to the Iraqi people and to listen to representatives from all communities." Kouchner was met at the airport by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and driven in an armored SUV accompanied by American and Iraqi armored vehicles into Baghdad. Kouchner arrived on the fourth anniversary of the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that killed U.N. special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 19 other people; the two men were friends. Merely stepping onto Iraqi soil was a major symbol of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's efforts to end any lingering U.S.-French animosities over the 2003 Iraq invasion.

• Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, hosted more talks among the political factions on Saturday, seeking support for an alliance of Kurdish and Shiite parties touted as a partial solution to the crisis. "There are some issues that have not been resolved because they require time," said Naseer al-Ani, the head of the president's office. He singled out a law on the equal division of Iraq's oil wealth.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)