BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. troops rounded up 49 suspected guerrillas near Saddam Hussein's hometown Friday, a day after Iraq's most violent rebel groups warned voters against participating in crucial elections for a constitutional assembly on Jan. 30.
Soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division detained the suspects during a midnight raid in Duluiyah, 45 miles north of Baghdad, dubbed Operation Powder River, the U.S. military said.
The statement did not provide any further details on the operation, which appears to be the latest in a series of anti-insurgency campaigns in the so-called Sunni Triangle in central Iraq. Duluiyah is near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.
In Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, U.S. troops came under mortar attack Friday. They opened fire, killing one Iraqi and wounding two others, local hospital sources said.
Meanwhile in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, two civilians were killed and four Iraqi National Guardsmen wounded when rebels detonated a car bomb next to the taxi the soldiers were riding in. A passing car absorbed the brunt of the blast, and its two occupants were killed, Maj. Neil O'Brien said.
North of Fallujah, the body of an Iraqi national guardsman was found in the Thira'dijlla area with a handwritten note pinned to it saying: "This is the fate of anyone who collaborates with the occupation forces."
In Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military convoy on the highway leading to the western Dora neighborhood, police said. One American vehicle was damaged but there were no casualties.
During Friday prayers in a Baghdad mosque, Sheik Ahmed Abdul-Ghafour Al-Samarie of the Association of Muslim Scholars — an influential Sunni group — demanded that the U.S. troops leave Iraq.
"We have to realize that the Allah is mightier than America and more powerful than the occupation forces," he said. "America, which conducted crimes everywhere and supported Israel against Muslims, should take the lesson of the torrent and surge of the ocean in Asia."
Al-Samarie was referring to Sunday's tsunami in the Indian Ocean that devastated 11 nations.
Insurgents have been ratcheting up the pressure on U.S.-led multinational forces as the campaign for the Jan. 30 elections heats up. Militants mainly have targeted members of the U.S.-installed interim government's security forces, labeling them collaborators with American occupiers.
The United States and the interim government in Baghdad, which say the vote for a constitutional assembly must go forward, have portrayed recent attacks killing dozens of people as acts of a reeling insurgency and not the work of a strengthening force.
On Thursday, the radical Ansar al-Sunnah Army and two other insurgent groups issued a statement warning that democracy was un-Islamic. Democracy could lead to passing un-Islamic laws, such as permitting homosexual marriage, if the majority or people agreed to it, the statement said.
"Democracy is a Greek word meaning the rule of the people, which means that the people do what they see fit," the statement said. "This concept is considered apostasy and defies the belief in one God — Muslims' doctrine."
Ansar al-Sunnah earlier posted a manifesto on its Web site saying democracy amounts to idolizing human beings. Thursday's joint statement — also signed by the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Mujahedeen Army — reiterated the threat that "anyone who accepts to take part in this dirty farce will not be safe."
The statements by the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgent groups seemed aimed at countering Shiite leaders' claims that voting in the election is every Muslim's duty. Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the population, hope to use the vote to grab power from minority Sunnis, who were favored under Saddam.
On Friday, a senior member of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq denied a report by the Al-Jazeera satellite channel that all 700 workers for the Mosul electoral commission resigned Thursday because of threats.
"The report is not true," Abdel al-Lami told The Associated Press. "Only two people resigned and they are the head of the (electoral) office in Mosul and an accountant."
He added that they stepped down "for personal reasons" and not because of threats.