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| Iraq 'al-Qaeda militants' killed | Iraq 'al-Qaeda militants' killed |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| The US military says it has killed 20 suspected al-Qaeda militants in a ground and air assault in central Iraq. | The US military says it has killed 20 suspected al-Qaeda militants in a ground and air assault in central Iraq. |
| The air strike was ordered after troops came under fire in the Tharthar area, north of Baghdad, a statement said. | |
| Elsewhere, more than 1,000 Danish and UK troops stormed homes in Basra, in a raid the UK military described as the biggest of its kind in southern Iraq. | |
| The US military also confirmed that a US soldier died in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad on Thursday. | |
| Women killed | |
| The US military said its operation in Tharthar had been based on intelligence reports indicating people with links to al-Qaeda in Iraq were working in the area. | |
| Ground forces were searching a cluster of buildings in the Tharthar area of Salahaddin province when they were targeted with machine gun fire, the military said in a statement. | |
| The troops returned fire and killed two suspected insurgents, the military said, but continued to come under fire. | |
| The air strike was then ordered, in which another 18 suspected militants died. Among them were two women. | |
| On searching the site, US troops found a weapons cache containing "machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-personnel mines, explosives, blasting caps and suicide vests", the statement said. | |
| 'Rogue elements' | |
| The joint British and Danish operation, launched before dawn, led to the arrest of five Iraqis in the Hartha district of the city of Basra. | |
| Major Charlie Burbridge, a British spokesman for the coalition forces, said the men detained "were strongly linked with various criminal activities: kidnapping, murder and attacks on multinational forces". | |
| He described them as "five leaders of rogue elements of militias operating in Basra". | |
| There were no coalition casualties and no evidence that civilians had been hurt, Maj Burbridge said. It is not yet clear whether any suspected militants were injured in the raids. | |
| Weapons were found in the properties, including artillery shells already wired up for use as roadside bombs, he added. |