Insurgents bombed a minibus on Saturday near Baghdad's Shia slum of Sadr City, killing five people, while troops raided a prominent Sunni mosque compound in Baghdad and captured 18 suspected militants. The bomb in the minibus, which exploded in the capital's eastern Baladiyat neighbourhood, also wounded 11 people, a medic and a security official said.
Insurgent bomb attacks have continued in Baghdad despite a massive US and Iraqi military crackdown since February aimed at reining in the bloodshed in the capital. Alleged Sunni extremists regularly target Sadr City, the impoverished Shiite slum loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and areas around it in the ongoing brutal sectarian conflict that has engulfed Baghdad.
Meanwhile, Iraqi and US forces Saturday detained 18 suspected militants linked to al Qaeda in a raid on the compound of Baghdad's prominent Sunni mosque Um al-Qura mosque, the US military said.
In a pre-dawn sweep, troops raided the mosque complex in Baghdad's western Ghazaliyah neighbourhood to capture a suspected al Qaeda in Iraq operative "believed to be operating a terrorist media cell," the military said. Also Saturday, two people were killed and four wounded when mortar shells slammed into their houses in eastern Baghdad's Rashaad area, an Iraqi security official said.
In another incident south of Baghdad one person was killed and five others were wounded in a car bomb attack on Saturday near a factory in the town of Mahmudiyah, security officials said. The fatality took the military's losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,629, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.