Around 1,000 US and Iraqi troops swept through the western town of Haditha this evening, searching homes and seizing suspects in an anti-insurgent raid that comes after a surge in militant attacks.
The US military said Marines, sailors and Iraqi soldiers were involved in the operation, dubbed New Market, which saw troops descend on the Euphrates river town northwest of Baghdad before dawn, backed by US helicopters.
The operation is the second major offensive in the area this month as US forces try to staunch the insurgency in western Iraq, where militants such as Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are believed to be hiding. In a posting on an Islamist website, al Qaeda in Iraq, the group led by Zarqawi, said its fighters had clashed with US troops in Haditha.
It said its militants "fought glorious battles with crusaders and their agents", referring to US and Iraqi forces. The US military confirmed the clashes and said it had killed 10 insurgents in separate clashes and discovered a small weapons cache.
Two Marines were wounded. "Local citizens identified one of the attackers killed as an imam (prayer leader)," the US military said in a statement. "The imam was firing on Marines and Iraqi security forces with an AK-47 assault rifle."
The operation came a day after another Islamist website carried a posting saying Zarqawi, America's most-wanted man in Iraq with a $25-million bounty on his head, had been wounded in fighting, although it did not say where, when or how.
Reports in recent weeks have said US forces were closing in on Zarqawi, having captured his driver, an aide and his laptop computer in a February raid. Insurgent attacks have soared nationwide over the past month, since the formation of a Shi'ite-led government, with more than 600 Iraqis and dozens of US troops killed.
Violence between Iraq's main Muslim sects has also increased. Haditha, a town of about 100,000 people 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Baghdad in the Euphrates valley, sits on a major supply route between Syria and the rebel stronghold of Ramadi and has long been suspected of being a militant haven.