Three killed in Iraq raid

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Gunmen wearing uniforms of a Shiite-led security force swept into a Sunni Arab neighborhood in central Baghdad before dawn Monday, killing three men and speeding away with more than 20 others, police and witnesses said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said seven more U.S. troops had been killed – a soldier in a roadside bombing in Baghdad on Monday, two Air Force members in a blast near Taji north of the capital late Sunday, and four soldiers in a roadside bombing near the northern town of Hawijah on Friday.

There was no word on the fate of kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll. Iraqi officials said joint U.S.-Iraqi operations were carried out recently to free her, but they provided no details.

Also Monday, bodies of eight Sunni Arabs were found in a field north of Baghdad – five days after they were seized on their way home by bus after being rejected for admission to the police academy in the capital. Twenty-three bodies of the group were found Sunday, and 35 were believed to have been on the bus. Police are often targeted by insurgents.

The pre-dawn raid in the predominantly Sunni Arab of Toubji threatens to inflame sectarian tensions as leaders of Iraq’s religious and ethnic communities prepare for talks on a unity government to include Sunni Arabs, the heart of the insurgency.

Sunni Arabs have long complained of abuse by Shiite militias and security services and have demanded that those responsible be punished.

Later Monday, a senior official of a government organization that administers Sunni mosques was slain by gunmen as he drove home from evening prayers at a Baghdad mosque. Naji Mohammed al-Eithaw, 55, had served as a spokesman for the Sunni Endowments and was a regular contributor to Baghdad newspapers.

Sunni Arabs have long complained of abuses by the Shiite-led forces, accusing them of abducting and killing Sunni civilians under the pretext of battling the insurgency. Shiite civilians are also targeted by Sunni extremists.

A suicide bomber targeted a police patrol near the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad and close to a main checkpoint into the fortified Green Zone. Two civilians and a policeman were killed and six Iraqis were wounded, officials said. Among the dead was a sports journalist for Iraqi TV station Al-Diyar.