IRAQ: American forces in Iraq last night claimed to have killed up to 100 Iraqis in four days of fighting north of Baghdad, as coalition troops tried to end the last pockets of resistance in Iraq.
At least 27 Iraqis were killed in a single incident yesterday when a US tank patrol came under fire in the town of Balad, 150 km north-west of Baghdad, a statement from US military claimed.
The incident was the latest in a series of clashes in the "Sunni Triangle" around Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, where elements loyal to the ousted dictator have continued to harry Coalition forces.
The operation, codenamed "Peninsular Strike", comes after several weeks of low-level skirmishes which have seen the death of 40 American soldiers since May 1st.
The guerrilla attacks have been concentrated in Baghdad and two nearby areas - to the west around Ramadi and Falluja and to the north around Balad, Baquba and Tikrit.
American military and diplomatic sources continue to discount claims that the resistance is being centrally organised, blaming instead localised pockets of pro-Saddam fighters.
The mopping-up operation opened in the small hours of Thursday morning with air and land strikes on a "terrorist training camp" outside Balad. Up to 70 Iraqis were reported killed and almost 400 arrested for interrogation.
Local sources said the resistance was fuelled by resentment caused by the heavy-handed tactics of US forces. Later it was confirmed that 70 of prisoners had been released because they were too young, too old or "of no intelligence value".
There was further confusion when US Central Command claimed to have arrested 74 "suspected al-Qaeda sympathisers", an assertion that appeared to support pre-war claims in Washington that Arab al-Qaeda fighters had poured into Iraq in support of Saddam.
However yesterday, Lieut Gen David McKiernan, a senior US commander in Iraq, appeared to back away from those claims, saying it was "premature" to speak of ties to al-Qaeda.
US casualties in the military action have been light, with six soldiers wounded in the past 24 hours according to Capt John Morgan, spokesman of the US Army's V Corps in Baghdad.
The most serious loss was an Apache helicopter gunship shot down by Iraqi fighters - the first American aircraft lost to enemy fire since hostilities ended two months ago. The crew were rescued unharmed.
In a separate incident in northern Iraq, Turkey said investigations were under way to establish whether sabotage was to blame for a blast on a section of pipeline in the Kirkuk oilfields.
US engineers said there was a fire on the main oil export pipeline from Kirkuk to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, but said it was due to a gas leak.
The Turkish Foreign Minister, Mr Abdullah Gul, in an early response, said there sabotage was suspected and that an investigation was under way.
However, a Foreign Ministry official said later Ankara had not yet received conclusive evidence on whether the blast was caused by a leak or sabotage.
The 965 km pipeline from the Kirkuk oilfields to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan had a capacity of 1.1 million barrels a day before the war and has not yet resumed pumping oil. - (Additional reporting from Reuters)