Troops raid suspected rebels

BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. troops battled arms smugglers and fighters near the Iraqi town of Qaim along the Syrian border Tuesday, killing an unknown number of foreign insurgents, the U.S. military said. Local hospital officials reported at least nine people killed in clashes in the same area and said they believed the dead were civilians.

The raids came as separate car bombs in two northern cities killed a total of 10 people and as the Iraqi government claimed to have captured a former member of Saddam Hussein’s regime at a farm northeast of Baghdad.

The Qaim raid occurred a day after insurgents tried unsuccessfully to ram two cars and a fire truck loaded with explosives into a Marine outpost there, but military officials said the attack was not related to the raid.

Insurgents opened fire when the U.S. troops began their raid on the smuggling ring Tuesday, and several militants, including at least one suicide bomber, were killed, the U.S. military said in a statement. No Americans were injured, it said.

Hamid al-Alousi, director of Qaim hospital, said his facility had received nine corpses and nearly two dozen wounded in the violence. Residents of a small village just north of Qaim said more than a dozen more people were buried in the area and not taken to the hospital. Residents and hospital officials said the victims appeared to be civilians.

It was impossible to verify the claims.

Without providing details, the group al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the Qaim clashes. The claim, posted on the Internet, could not be verified.

U.S. military officials said that two other raids in the area over the last week had resulted in the capture of smugglers who “confessed to bringing weapons, foreign fighters and money for terrorists across the Syrian border into Iraq.”

The news of the raids came as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a surprise visit to Iraq to urge the country’s new leaders to stay on track in forming a new government.

Rumsfeld said Washington hopes to see in the new government “highly competent people who are not going to politicize security forces” but will keep to the current strategy of maintaining a U.S. presence until Iraq’s own forces are capable of defeating the insurgents.

The Iraqi government claimed to have captured a former member of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Fadhil Ibrahim Mahmud al-Mashadani. The government said al-Mashadani was the leader of the military bureau in Baghdad under Saddam and it accused him of being “among the main facilitators of many terrorist attacks in Iraq.”

“Al-Mashadani is believed to be personally responsible for coordinating and funding attacks against the Iraqi people,” the statement said.

U.S. officials did not have any information.

Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski, meanwhile, said his country wanted to pull its troops out of Iraq in the first few weeks of 2006, the latest blow to the U.S.-led coalition.

His announcement came as a suicide car bomber in the northern city of Mosul killed five civilians and injured four others.

In nearby Talafar, a car bomb killed five people and wounded eight, including seven children, the U.S. military said.