60 militants killed: US
2008-01-14 20:24
Baghdad - Some 60 suspected militants were killed and 193 arrested in the first week of Operation Iron Harvest, a major sweep against al-Qaeda jihadists in four Iraqi provinces, the US military said on Monday.
At least 79 weapons caches consisting of over 10 000 rounds of small arms ammunition, over 2 000 heavy machine gun rounds, over 4 000 pounds of home-made explosives and around 100 homemade bombs were discovered in the raids, it said in a statement.
Iron Harvest is part of the countrywide Operation Phantom Phoenix launched last Tuesday.
It is being carried out in the central provinces of Diyala, Salaheddin, and in the northern provinces of Nineveh and Tamim.
At least 10 US soldiers have been killed since the launch of Iron Harvest, six of whom were killed when they walked into a booby-trapped house during operations in Diyala.
On Monday, police announced that seven Iraqi policemen were wounded and two are missing after a police patrol entered a booby-trapped house at al-Abarra, a village near Diyala's provincial capital Baquba.
- AFP