Iraq:The first US military unit scheduled to withdraw from Iraq under President George W Bush's plan to cut troop levels has left the war zone.
US army officers say their stepped-up security drive around Baghdad is yielding results and led to a decline in the number of US troop casualties this month. This has been the least deadly for US forces since July last year.
US forces killed a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the military said. Brig Gen Joseph Anderson, chief of staff for the Multi-National Corps-Iraq, described Abu Usama al-Tunisi as the "emir of foreign terrorists" in Iraq.
A US air raid in Baghdad killed at least eight people, medical sources said. A police source put the toll at 10 and said many were believed to be civilians.
Mr Bush increased troop levels by 30,000 this year to try to stem violence that was threatening to tear Iraq apart and to give the country's feuding politicians the "breathing space" needed to bridge their deep sectarian differences.
Under pressure from opposition Democrats and senior Republicans for big cuts in troop numbers, the president approved a plan from his top commander in Iraq to gradually reduce the US force by up to 30,000 by mid-2008.
Mr Bush said improved security made the cuts possible.
Capt Pamela Marshall, a military spokeswoman in Washington, said the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a group of 2,200 marines who were stationed in western Anbar province, had boarded a naval vessel and begun the trip home.
A brigade combat team, which normally includes about 4,000 troops, is expected to leave Iraq in mid-December followed by four other brigade combat teams and two marine battalions.
The US force now totals about 165,000 in Iraq.
Brig Gen Anderson said Tunisi was killed on Tuesday south of Baghdad in an air strike. He said the militant, from Tunisia, had brought al-Qaeda fighters into Iraq and was responsible for kidnapping US soldiers in June 2006.
"Abu Usama al-Tunisi was one of the most senior leaders within al-Qaeda in Iraq," he told Pentagon reporters by videolink from Iraq. He did not say which soldiers the group kidnapped and the Pentagon could not immediately provide that information.
In Baghdad, a medical source at the Yarmouk hospital said eight bodies had been brought in from a southern neighbourhood after US helicopters targeted a building yesterday.
It is the second time this week US forces have been accused of killing civilians in air strikes. The US military is investigating an attack this week which local police said killed five women and four children.
That strike took place on the same day and in the same area that Brig Gen Anderson said Tunisi had been killed.
North of the capital, the Iraqi army said it had killed 30 suspected al-Qaeda insurgents.
Fifty-nine US soldiers have been killed in September, according to the website icasualties.org which tracks military deaths, making it the least deadly month for US troops since July last year. Twenty-two of the deaths were defined as "non-hostile", many of them road accidents.
"What we found is that the current operations . . . managed to disrupt a lot of cells," said US military spokesman, Lieut Col Rudy Burwell. "We were able to push them from Baghdad and pursue them. That's what we attribute the lower casualties to.
"Obviously [the militants] have not been eliminated, but they have been disrupted."
September's figure is on track to be about half the death toll for May when additional forces were deployed in greater strength across several dangerous areas.
- (Reuters)