BAGHDAD (AFP) — Iraqi and US troops killed two suspected militants and detained 22 in separate raids across the country, military statements said Thursday.
US forces killed two and detained five militants in the village of Khan Bani Saad, north of Baghdad, in an early morning raid targeting a Shiite militant suspected of involvement in smuggling bombs from Iran into Iraq.
"The suspected criminal was also reportedly an associate of several other senior criminal element leaders who were involved in attacks on coalition forces," a US military statement said.
The target was a member of so-called special groups that broke away from the Mahdi Army militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who ordered in August a six-month freeze of his militia's activities.
The US military says that the special groups of Shiite extremists are receiving arms, training and funding from Iran's elite Quds Force, the covert wing of Iran's Republican Guards.
In a separate incident in western Baghdad, a US soldier was killed by insurgent small arms fire on Wednesday, the military said without elaborating.
The Iraqi defence ministry meanwhile said its troops raided a hideout of Al-Qaeda in Iraq near the town of Latifiyah, south of Baghdad, and detained 17 suspected militants.
Security officials also reported that a bomb exploded inside a bus in Baghdad's central Palestine Street, killing one person and wounding five.
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