US forces kill civilian, wound two in Baquba (Roundup)

Nov 15, 2007, 15:40 GMT

Baghdad - US forces killed an Iraqi civilian and wounded two others in Baquba, while one US soldier was reportedly killed and four wounded in Diyala province, sources said Thursday.

Witnesses said an Iraqi civilian was killed and two others wounded Thursday when the US forces opened fire on a car carrying them to a suburb of Baquba, 60 kilometres north-east of Baghdad.

The US military did not comment on the incident.

Meanwhile, one US soldier was killed and another four wounded Wednesday in an explosion while conducting operations in Diyala province, the US military in Iraq disclosed Thursday.

No further details were immediately available.

In other developments, unidentified gunmen kidnapped the son of sheikh Kazem Ibrahim al-Mahdawi, chief of the Mahdiya tribe in Baquba, and took him to an unknown place.

Also in Baquba, Iraqi police patrols discovered two corpses which bore signs of torture in Mandali area.

Diyala province has recently witnessed recurrent acts of violence. Joint Iraqi-US forces had launched the Operation Arrowhead Ripper in Diyala in June in a bid to rid the provincial capital Baquba and other cities of al-Qaeda militants.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber driving a car bomb targeted the motorcade of Kirkuk emergency police chief Khatab Abdullah, killing six persons, most of them security guards, and wounding 24 others, most of them civilians, an Iraqi police source said.

A number of nearby buildings were damaged in the attack, the source added.

Abdullah had been exposed to several attempts on his life in recent weeks.

In a separate incident, six Iraqi soldiers were wounded, four seriously, when an explosive charge went off targeting their patrol in the main road between Kirkuk and Baghdad.

Kirkuk, 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, is a multi-ethnic city fought over by its Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab communities. The city has seen a surge in violence in the last few days.

In north Baghdad, an Iraqi female director of a secondary school was shot dead on her way to work in Kadhimiya neighbourhood, Iraqi security sources said.

The same sources said an explosive device exploded in central Baghdad, wounding two Iraqis and destroying a number of stores nearby.

The US forces, meanwhile, killed 25 terrorist suspects and captured 21 in raids on the al-Qaeda terrorist network hideouts in central Iraq, the US military said Thursday.

The US army said it killed suspected al-Qaeda insurgents in operations late on Tuesday and early Wednesday west of Tarmiyah, the statement added.

'Coalition forces observed several armed men in the target area and, perceiving hostile intent, called for supporting aircraft to engage,' it said.

Troops engaged with the insurgents in 'self defence' after they came under fire in various areas of the operation. They killed 25 suspects and captured 21, four of whom were injured.

Troops found a weapons cache that included anti-aircraft machine guns, surface-to-surface missiles, rifles, pistols, grenades, mortar rounds and artillery shells.

They also found a large quantity of ammunition and components used to manufacture improvised explosive devices.

The operations are part of a large-scale offensive by joint US- Iraqi troops to weaken al-Qaeda in Iraq, a militant Sunni group blamed for many deadly attacks on civilians, tribal chiefs and officials perceived as collaborating with the US-led coalition forces.

In the premodinantely Shiite city of Karbala, 110 kilometres south of Baghdad, the Iraqi police detained overnight four local council officials loyal to the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, security sources said.

The detainees include the council chief Hassan al-Aarji, the sources added.

The four officials are being interrogated over charges related to the city security.