Iraqi and US troops clashed with Shia militiamen in a village northeast of Baghdad yesterday.
Witnesses and police said US helicopters bombed orchards to flush out gunmen thought to be hiding there
Iraqi security officials claimed Iranian fighters had been captured in the fighting, in which a sniper shot dead the commander of an Iraqi reaction force and two of his men. They did not say how the Iranians had been identified.
A civilian was also killed and five people were wounded in the clashes.
Elsewhere, a suicide car bomber rammed into a funeral service for a Shia soldier and killed seven people in the Iraqi northern city of Kirkuk. The attack wounded 25.
Oil-rich Kirkuk, 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, is an ethnically mixed city claimed by Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen that has seen violence in the past.