BAGHDAD, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Iraq's military said eight policemen were killed in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday as they tried to defuse a series of rockets that had been prepared for an attack.

The security forces had been responding to rockets fired at two nearby army bases, one for U.S. and one for Iraqi forces, from the capital's Shi'ite Ubaidi district.

"The bomb disposal unit were trying to defuse eight rockets in Ubaidi but they lost control and it exploded, killing eight and wounding 42," said Major-General Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for Iraq's military in Baghdad.

The U.S. military confirmed there had been an attack on one of their bases but had no further details.

On Monday, five civilians were killed and 14 wounded when rockets landed on a Sunni residential area near Baghdad's international airport, one of the capital's deadliest rocket attacks for months. Police said they were fired from a neighbouring Shi'ite area.

The Iraqi military said on Saturday that attacks in Baghdad had dropped by up to 80 percent thanks to a year-long security crackdown on al Qaeda militants and feuding Sunni Arab and Shi'ite gunmen.

But the U.S. military has warned that "special groups", by which it means rogue elements in the Mehdi Army militia of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are still active and it has been targeting them aggressively. (Reporting by Michael Holden, editing by Tim Pearce)

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