Four U.S. soldiers killed; 241 Iraqis freed from custody (Roundup)

Dec 10, 2005, 16:48 GMT

Baghdad - Four U.S. soldiers were killed in separate incidents Saturday in Baghdad - three of them by small-arms fire, the U.S. military said.

One incident was in the Yusifiyah district in the southwest of the capital while another occurred northwest of the capital. The fourth soldier was killed when his patrol struck a roadside bomb in the Adhimiyah district in north Baghdad.

The military announced Saturday the death of another soldier in Abu Ghraib in the west of Baghdad. That incident, which occurred Friday, injured 11 other soldiers and one Iraqi civilian.

A police patrol in Tikrit on Saturday discovered the body of an Egyptian kidnapped from his home the day before in a village near Bayji, some 200 kilometres north of Baghdad.

Ibrahim Sayed al-Hilali, who worked for the U.S. military and been shot, police said.

A former governor of the southern province Najaf survived a roadside bomb Saturday in an attack that killed one of his bodyguards.

Adnan al-Zarfi was returning to Najaf from an election rally in Kufa when the bomb went off on the road, 180 kilometres south of Baghdad.

U.S. and British forces released 241 Iraqi detainees from the country's two main prisons, the Iraqi Justice Ministry said Saturday.

The ministry said the prisoners were released from the U.S.- controlled Abu Ghraib prison close to Baghdad and the British- controlled Boka facility in Basra after they were found innocenet of the charges brought against them.

In another statement, the U.S. military said a total of 52 detainees had been rounded up in the Tikrit region in a two-day period up to Saturday morning.

Among those held were three suspects wanted in connection with bomb attacks against civilians and the military.