U.S.-led coalition forces kill 19 civilians

Coalition raids Iraq areas, killing 20

By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 29 minutes ago

U.S.-led coalition forces killed 20 insurgents, including two women, Friday in fighting and airstrikes that targeted al-Qaida in Iraq militants northwest of Baghdad, the military said. The mayor of the area said 19 civilians were killed, including seven women and eight children.

During the coalition raid near Lake Tharthar in Salahuddin province northwest of Baghdad on Friday, ground forces were searching buildings when they were attacked. They returned fire, killing two insurgents, the U.S. military said.

Under continuing fire, the troops called in air support, killing 18 insurgents, including two women, the command said in a brief statement. The military declined to specify which branch of the coalition was involved, but the U.S. provides the bulk of the air support in most of the country.

"Al-Qaida in Iraq has both men and women supporting and facilitating their operations unfortunately," it said.

Searching the area, the coalition forces found and destroyed several weapons caches, including AK-47s, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-personnel mines, explosives, blasting caps and suicide vests, the command said.

The raid was conducted in an area where intelligence reports had indicated that "associates with links to multiple al-Qaida in Iraq networks were operating," U.S. command said.

Amir Fayadh, the mayor of the al-Ishaqi area, east of the lake, and local police said 19 civilians were killed during airstrikes on two houses, and Fayadh said the dead included seven women and eight children.

In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed an American soldier Thursday during a joint patrol with the Iraqi army, the U.S. command said. The death raised to 33 the number of U.S. forces killed so far in December.

In the south, more than 800 British forces and 200 Danish troops fought Iraqis during a pre-dawn raid in the Hartha area on the outskirts of Basra, coalition officials said.

British Maj. Charlie Burbridge, the spokesman for the coalition in southern Iraq, said five Iraqis were detained and described them as members of "a rogue, breakaway element" of one of the many Shiite militias in the area. He said the suspects were directly involved in several local attacks.

Burbridge called it the largest search and detention operation that coalition forces have conducted in southern Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

The Danish soldiers arrived from the north, and British ones with armored vehicles arriving from the south, Burbridge said. Other British forces reached the area on boats traveling to the junction of the Garmat Ali River and the Shatt al-Arab waterway in an operation that was supported by helicopters and jets, he said.

Two large mosques were near one of the houses that was searched, but the raid ended long before residents began to travel to them on Friday, the day of worship in mostly Muslim Iraq, said Capt. Tane Dunlop, another spokesman for multinational forces in Basra, the city in southern Iraq where most British forces are based.

The arms cache found in one of the houses raided included Katyusha rockets, roadside bombs, rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, Dunlop said.

The Danish forces are based in Shaiba, a military base south of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, Dunlop said.

On Thursday, a series of bombings and shootings killed at least 23 people in Iraq, including a 7-year-old girl and two college professors, police said. Iraqi police also found 35 bullet-riddled bodies that had been bound and blindfolded and left in different parts of the capital.