Baghdad - US-backed military raids continued in and around
Baghdad on Sunday, as the US military reported 5 of its soldiers
killed in earlier operations.
In a statement the US military said the five marines lost their
lives Saturday around Baghdad, with four killed in an explosion that
wounded four others and another soldier killed by small arms fire
during a patrol.
US forces captured 30 suspected terrorists Sunday across Iraq in
raids that targeted bombing networks and al-Qaeda-affiliated
elements.
Local security forces based in the Shiite town of Karbala, 100
kilometres south of Baghdad, detained over the past few days 41
militants including members of al-Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq,
according to Aqeel al-Khazaali, governor of Karbala.
Five of those detained are said to own a travel agency in Karbala.
Al-Khazaali added that in addition to the arrests, several car
bombs were safely dismantled and a rocket launcher in addition to
city maps were reportedly found in the Karbala operations.
Meanwhile, loyalists of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr reiterated
their denial that the cleric had left Iraq to neighbouring Iran as US
reports had it earlier.
On Sunday, the independent news agency Voices of Iraq quoted
Parliamentarian Falah Shanshal, from the Sadrist bloc, as saying that
the 'US intelligence services are endeavouring to make a crack from
within the Sadr's movement because of the movement's stand towards
the Americans and its demands for putting a timetable for the US
forces' pullout of Iraq.
'It is not the first time the US forces make these kinds of
stories (about Sadr), mistakeningly believing that that would have
passive effects within Iraqi circles,' Shanshal added.
The last public appearance of al-Sadr was in May in Kufa during a
Friday sermon, during which he called on Shiite policymakers to
boycott Premier Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite-led cabinet and insisted on
immediate withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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