U.S.-led coalition forces killed 20 insurgents, including two women, Friday in fighting and air strikes that targeted al Qaeda in Iraq militants northwest of Baghdad, the military said. The mayor of the area said 19 civilians were killed, including seven women and eight children.
During the coalition raid near Lake Tharthar in Salahuddin province northwest of Baghdad on Friday, ground forces were searching buildings when they were attacked. They returned fire, killing two insurgents, the U.S. military said.
Under continuing fire, the troops called in air support, killing 18 insurgents, including two women, the command said in a brief statement. The military declined to specify which branch of the coalition was involved, but the U.S. provides the bulk of the air support in most of the country.
"Al Qaeda in Iraq has both men and women supporting and facilitating their operations unfortunately," it said.
Searching the area, the coalition forces found and destroyed several weapons caches, including AK-47s, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-personnel mines, explosives, blasting caps and suicide vests, the command said.
The raid was conducted in an area where intelligence reports had indicated that "associates with links to multiple al Qaeda in Iraq networks were operating," U.S. command said.
Amir Fayadh, the mayor of the al-Ishaqi area, east of the lake, and local police said 19 civilians were killed during air strikes on two houses, and Fayadh said the dead included seven women and eight children.
In other developments:
A Republican senator who voted in favor of the war in Iraq and has supported it ever since now says the war effort there is "absurd" and "may even be criminal." In a speech Thursday night on the Senate floor, Oregon Republican Gordon Smith called for changes in U.S. policy that could include rapid pullouts of U.S. troops. He also says he would have never voted for the conflict if he had known the intelligence that President Bush gave the American people was inaccurate.In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed an American soldier Thursday during a joint patrol with the Iraqi army, the U.S. command said. The death raised to 33 the number of U.S. forces killed so far in December. Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash.In the south, more than 800 British forces and 200 Danish troops fought Iraqis during a pre-dawn raid in the Hartha area on the outskirts of Basra, coalition officials said. British Maj. Charlie Burbridge, the spokesman for the coalition in southern Iraq, said five Iraqis were detained and described them as members of "a rogue, breakaway element" of one of the many Shiite militias in the area. He said the suspects were directly involved in several local attacks.On Thursday, a series of bombings and shootings killed at least 23 people in Iraq, including a 7-year-old girl and two college professors, police said. Iraqi police also found 35 bullet-riddled bodies that had been bound and blindfolded and left in different parts of the capital.