IRAQ:Eight American soldiers and a journalist were killed in bomb attacks in Iraq yesterday, the US military said.
In a statement, the military said the deadliest incident was when a roadside bomb killed six soldiers and the journalist in the volatile Diyala province. The bomb hit a vehicle they were in.
The statement gave no details on the journalist, but many foreign reporters have been embedding with US military units since a US-backed security crackdown in and around Baghdad that began in February.
Two other US soldiers were killed in separate bomb attacks yesterday, the military said, including one in Baghdad.
Earlier, a car bomb killed at least 35 people and wounded 80 next to a market in a Shia district of Baghdad which has been a target of repeated attacks blamed on Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda.
US forces killed up to 10 militants and destroyed a torture room in Baghdad's Sadr City, a bastion of the Mehdi Army militia of anti-American Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
American commanders said the predawn raid, on suspected members of a cell known for smuggling sophisticated bombs from Iran, found 150 mortar bombs in the same building as the torture room and troops destroyed them in a controlled blast. The raid in teeming Sadr City began at 1.30am and ended at 6am.
US forces were fired on with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, prompting commanders to call in air strikes that destroyed one building, said Maj Gen William Caldwell, a US military spokesman.
It was the second assault the US military has launched in recent days in Sadr City in search of cell members it accuses of procuring explosively formed penetrator bombs (EFPs) from Shia in Iran.
EFPs are lethal roadside bombs, the deadliest weapon used against US forces in Iraq. Attacks on US troops using armour-piercing EFPs have risen in recent months.
The US military believes EFP bombs are made in neighbouring Iran, a country Washington accuses of fomenting violence in Iraq. Tehran dismisses the charge.
"Intelligence reports indicate that the secret cell has ties to a kidnapping network that conducts attacks within Iraq as well as interactions with rogue elements throughout Iraq and into Iran," Maj Gen Caldwell told a news conference.
He added that US forces found handcuffs, bloodstains and one facial mask in what he called a torture room.
"We found a torture room in there, clearly a place that had been used to hold people and to torture them," he said.
On Friday, US forces detained 16 suspected Iraqi insurgents in Sadr City during an operation against cell members accused of facilitating the transport of EFPs from Iran.
The car bomb next to the market was one of the worst attacks in Baghdad in weeks. It exploded in the Bayaa district.
Bystanders used blankets to carry the dead and wounded to pick-up trucks.
The blast tore off shopfronts and destroyed cars.
"What did these innocent people do to get killed in a car bomb? Where is the government? Where is security? Let the government come and see this situation," said one man, angrily gesticulating at the scene.
US and Iraqi forces launched the security crackdown in Baghdad three months ago.
The push, bolstered by 30,000 extra US troops expected to be in place by June 1st, has reduced sectarian killings, but car bombs still plague the city. - ( Reuters, additional reporting by Aseel Kami and Ahmed Rasheed)