20 suspected insurgents killed in raid

BAGHDAD -- US-led forces killed 20 suspected insurgents during a raid targeting fighters from the group Al Qaeda in Iraq northwest of Baghdad yesterday, the US military said. Two women were among those killed, the military said.

Acting on intelligence reports, ground forces were searching buildings in a village near Tharthar Lake in Salahuddin Province when insurgents fired machine guns at them. The troops fired back, killing two suspects, the military said in a statement.

Under attack, the troops called for an airstrike, which killed 18 more suspects, the military said.

Amir Alwan, mayor of Ishaqi, disputed the military's account, saying that 10 men, four women, and 10 children in his village were killed.

News agencies published what they said were photos of dead children at the site. The military denied that civilians and children were killed.

The US-led coalition said the attack was aimed at Al Qaeda-linked militants in a predominantly Sunni area near Lake Tharthar.

In another raid yesterday morning, troops captured seven suspected insurgents near Fallujah in Anbar Province and destroyed a building containing a weapons cache, according to the military. Most of the cache, which included materials for making bombs, was buried in the floors of the house.

Raids also occurred near Basra in southern Iraq yesterday, with 800 British and 200 Danish troops conducting a predawn sweep of houses to arrest suspects in murders, kidnappings, and attacks on coalition forces, according to a statement from the British military.

Yesterday's raids were part of US-led forces' stepped-up efforts to capture insurgents and their weapons. Much of their focus has been on Baghdad, but fighting continues in Anbar Province, another deadly place for American troops.

"We see Al Qaeda conducting operations to kill civilians, and it starts the cycle of sectarian violence all over again," said Lieutenant Christopher Garver, a US military spokesman.

In other developments yesterday:

Iraqi officials said they are nearing agreement on a national oil law that would give the central government the power to distribute oil revenues to provinces and regions based on population, The New York Times reported in today's editions. The measure is aimed at settling a divisive issue that has hampered efforts to unite the country's ethnic and sectarian factions.

Controversy erupted over yesterday's Tharthar raid.

Ishaqi police Captain Mohammed Faisal said that two houses belonging to two brothers were destroyed in the bombing. Khalaf Muhammad, 41, a farmer in the Tharthar area, also said that two houses were bombed and that 18 people lived in them. He said neighbors found the bodies of women and children in the rubble.

The Associated Press released a photo of a man holding a dead child at the bombing site. Another news agency, Agence-France Presse, also showed photographs of dead children.

Asked about the photos, Garver said troops who conducted the raid reported that they had found no children.

"We didn't see anything in those photos that specifically link the children to the airstrike," he said.

Garver said that the two women whom troops reported killing were suspected insurgents. "There's nothing to indicate they were noncombatants," he said.

The troops also found AK-47 assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, antipersonnel mines, explosives, blasting caps, and suicide vests at the site, the military said.

This is not the first time residents of Ishaqi have accused American troops of misconduct. This spring, a US military investigation cleared US soldiers of killing 11 civilians before calling for an airstrike in a March 15 raid on a suspected insurgent hideout.

The military would not disclose the nationalities of the coalition forces involved in yesterday's raid, but US troops make up the largest contingent of forces in the country.

British Major Charlie Burbridge, a spokesman for the coalition in southern Iraq, said five Iraqis were detained in the raids near Basra.

He described them as members of a "rogue, breakaway element" of one of the area's many Shi'ite militias, and 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 coalition said the raid consisted of multiple missions that occurred at the same time.

The Danish soldiers arrived from the north, while British armored vehicles drove in from the south, Burbridge said.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.