U.S., Iraqis say 60 insurgents dead

BAGHDAD – U.S. and Iraqi forces killed more than 60 insurgent and militia fighters in battles over the weekend, with most of the casualties believed to have been al-Qaida fighters, officials said Sunday.

The U.S. Embassy, meanwhile, joined a broad swath of Iraqi politicians – both Shiite and Sunni – in criticizing a nonbinding U.S. Senate resolution seen here as a recipe for splitting the country along sectarian and ethnic lines.

The U.S. military also announced the death of an American soldier killed Saturday in a roadside bombing and gunfire attack in eastern Baghdad.

U.S. aircraft killed more than 20 al-Qaida in Iraq fighters who opened fire on an American air patrol northwest of Baghdad, the U.S. command said.

The firefight between U.S. aircraft and the insurgent fighters occurred Saturday about 17 miles northwest of the capital, the military said.

The aircraft observed about 25 al-Qaida members carrying AK-47 assault rifles – one brandishing a rocket-propelled grenade – walking into a palm grove, the military said.

The military did not say what kind of aircraft were involved but the fact that the fighters opened fire suggests they were low-flying Apache helicopters. The command said more than 20 of the group were killed and four vehicles were destroyed. No Iraqi civilians or U.S. soldiers were hurt.

Iraq’s Defense Ministry said in an e-mail Sunday afternoon that Iraqi soldiers had killed 44 “terrorists” over the past 24 hours. The operations were centered in Salahuddin and Diyala provinces and around the city of Kirkuk, where the ministry said its soldiers had killed 40 and arrested eight. It said 52 fighters were arrested altogether.

The Senate resolution, adopted last week, proposed reshaping Iraq according to three sectarian or ethnic territories. It calls for a limited central government with the bulk of power going to Shiite, Sunni or Kurdish regions, envisioning a power-sharing agreement similar to the one that ended the 1990s war in Bosnia. Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, was a prime sponsor.

In a highly unusual statement, the U.S. Embassy said the resolution would seriously hamper Iraq’s future stability.

“Our goal in Iraq remains the same: a united, democratic, federal Iraq that can govern, defend, and sustain itself,” the unsigned statement said.

The statement came just hours after representatives of Iraq’s major political parties denounced the Senate proposal.