Fourteen people were killed in attacks around central Iraq on Monday as insurgents ambushed those suspected of collaborating with US forces. Four men driving in a sports utility vehicle, which are often used by foreign contractors, were hit by a roadside bomb and then gunfire in Ashaki, south of the Sunni hotspot of Samarra, said Lieutenant Colonel Hamid Mohammed. The bodies, three of them thought to be foreigners, were picked up by other cars in the dead men's convoy, he added.
The US military said it had no information on the incident.
The region around Samarra is rife with support for Iraq's insurgency. Armed men carry out regular attacks on those suspected of working with the Americans.
Earlier, an Iraqi truck driver leaving a US military base near the town of Yethrub, north of Baghdad, was shot dead, said Lieutenant Colonel Ali Abdullah.
An Iraqi translator for the US military was also shot dead by unknown gunmen near Salman Pak, said Major Hamed Abdullah of the Salman Pak police.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi woman was killed and three civilians wounded when a roadside bomb exploded on the road between the restive cities of Samarra and Fallujah, said police Lieutenant Colonel Mahmud Mohamed.
In Yathrib, three bodies of national guardsmen, who had been kidnapped Sunday, were discovered, said Captain Qassem Mohammed.
A Turkish truck driver was killed by a bomb near Tikrit, said police Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Sabah. Two members of the National Salvation party, set up by former Saddam-era intelligence chief Wafiq al-Samarrai, were shot dead in Samarra, police said.
In the main northern city of Mosul, US and Iraqi forces swept a mosque and arrested its main cleric, said a religious leader.
US soldiers and Iraqi national guardsmen raided the Ahmed Ismail mosque in northern Mosul late Sunday and detained Sheikh Bashar Awad, said Sheikh Natham Bassel, a fellow mosque member.
Awad belongs to the Sunni Committee of Muslim Scholars, a nation-wide association of clerics that has vowed to boycott January's key elections.
A US army spokesman said the military had no record of the raid but said the army had searched the al-Sabrine mosque in south-eastern Mosul overnight.
They were looking for a cleric "responsible for inciting anti-Iraqi rhetoric" but could not find him, he added.
In Baghdad, two mortar shells struck inside a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim mosque complex on Sunday, wounding four guards, one of them seriously, another religious leader said.
The mortars landed in the garden at the Ibn Tamiya mosque, a sanctuary for the fundamentalist Wahabi sect, damaging the walls and shattering windows, said Sheikh Zakhariyah Abu Yahiya.
"It's the bad security situation in Iraq. I can't accuse anyone," said Abu Yahiya.
The senior cleric at Ibn Tamiya, Sheikh Mehdi Sumaiydah, was arrested by US troops along with 23 others on November 11 after soldiers found weapons inside the compound. The cleric was also arrested last January.
The US military has repeatedly come into conflict with Sunni clerics around Iraq.
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