US soldier, al-Qaeda militants killed in Iraq (Roundup)

Jul 8, 2008, 14:12 GMT

Baghdad - In a fresh bout of violence in Iraq, a US soldier was killed and four others were injured Tuesday in an attack in west Baghdad while three al-Qaeda militants were killed in fighting with police in the Diyala province, the US military and Iraqi police said.

A bomb struck a US military patrol in Baghdad's western Amiriyah district, Abdel-Latif Rayan, a spokesman for the US military, told the Voices of Iraq news agency.

The soldier, who died of his wounds after several surgical operations, was the second US soldier to die in Iraq in July.

Earlier, the US military said four security contractors were killed and eight injured by a roadside bomb in northern Iraq.

A convoy carrying the contractors was hit by the bomb at 3:30 pm (1230 GMT) on Monday south of Mosul, 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, a military statement said.

The statement did not give the nationalities of the contractors.

In Diyala, north-east of Baghdad, three militants from the al-Qaeda in Iraq group were killed in fighting with police in the village of Makhisa, security sources told VOI.

Iraqi troops captured during security sweeps in the provincial capital Baquba two senior members of the Islamic State of Iraq group, security officials told VOI.

The extremist Islamic State of Iraq, made up of seven armed groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq, was established in 2006 in Sunni provinces.

It has been enforcing a strict version of the Islamic Sharia law in areas it controlled in central and western Iraq.

The groups has appointed ministers, including both of its members arrested on Tuesday, who are the so-called minister of finance, Haki Ismail, and the minister of agriculture, Muthana al-Dulaymi, according to VOI.

Earlier, the head of the municipal council in Diyala, Ibrahim Bajlan, told VOI that police received information that three women were currently in Baquba to carry out suicide bombings targeting government buildings.

Their names are known to the police but they cannot be identified among the masses of people, Bajlan said.

In the northern Salahaddin province, US troops killed a former Iraqi army officer in an overnight raid on his house in the village of al-Sheikh in Shirkat area, a local security official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The US military has not released any information on the incident.

In nearby Tikrit, a policeman was killed by a bomb overnight, the security official said.

The incident occurred when the policeman, driving the car of the province's police chief, was on patrol in Arbin street at 2:00 a.m. (Monday, 2300 GMT).