US troops killed 10 insurgents in Baghdad, while 10 Iraqi troops died in two separate attacks north-east of the capital in a surge of violence following a relative lull last week.
A US statement said soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment killed the 10 insurgents in Tal Afar, 260 miles north of Baghdad. American troops suffered no losses.
Insurgents, however, struck back twice against Iraqi army positions in Khalis, 45 miles north of Baghdad.
The first assault began at 5am when gunmen firing mortars, machine guns and semi-automatic weapons stormed an Iraqi checkpoint, killing eight Iraqi soldiers, Khalis police chief Colonel Mahdi Saleh said.
One and a half hours later, a car bomb exploded as an Iraqi army patrol passed, killing two soldiers, Saleh said. Three soldiers and three civilians were in both attacks. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attacks in a web statement, whose authenticity could not be confirmed.
On June 15th, a suicide bomber wearing an army uniform blew himself up in an Iraqi army mess hall in Khalis, killing 26 soldiers. Although US forces suffered no losses in the Tal Afar fighting, two US Marines were killed yesterday by "indirect fire" - presumably mortar shells - in the insurgent stronghold of Hit along the Syrian border, the US command said.
The victims were assigned to Regimental Combat Team 2 of the 2nd Marine Division, which has been assisting Iraqi forces trying to secure the town after fighting there last month. Clashes in the north and west of the country followed violence yesterday in which about 60 people were killed in a series of suicide attacks, car bombings and ambushes.
The US military, meanwhile, released Cyrus Kar, a 44-year-old aspiring filmmaker from Los Angeles who had been detained in Iraq for nearly two months, officials said. Kar, an Iranian-American, was taken into custody on May 17th near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, when potential bomb parts were found in a taxi in which he was riding.
Agencies