BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S.-led forces killed 20 suspected insurgents during a raid targeting fighters from the group al-Qaida in Iraq northwest of Baghdad on Friday morning, the U.S. military said. Two women were among those killed, the military said.
Acting on intelligence reports, ground forces were searching buildings in a village near Tharthar Lake in Salahuddin province when insurgents fired machine guns at them. The troops fired back, killing two suspects, the military said in a statement. Under attack, the troops called for an airstrike, which killed 18 more suspects, the military said.
Amir Alwan, mayor of Ishaqi, disputed the military's account, saying that 10 men, 4 women and 10 children in his village were killed. News agencies published what they said were photos of dead children at the site. The military denied that civilians and children were killed.
In another raid Friday morning, troops captured seven suspected insurgents near the city of Fallujah in Anbar province and destroyed a building containing a weapons cache, according to the military. Most of the cache, which included materials for making bombs, was buried in the floors of the house.
The raids were part of U.S.-led forces' stepped-up efforts to capture insurgents and their weapons. Much of their focus has been on Baghdad, but fighting continues in Anbar province, another deadly place for American troops.
"We see al-Qaida conducting operations to kill civilians, and it starts the cycle of sectarian violence all over again," said Lt. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman.
The military announced Friday that two U.S. soldiers were killed the day before by a roadside bomb as they patrolled an area south of Baghdad. Two soldiers were wounded in the attack.
Another roadside bomb Thursday killed a U.S. soldier in western Baghdad, the military said.
A mortar attack Friday evening in the Nahrawan neighborhood of southeastern Baghdad killed 12 people and wounded 11, according to an Interior Ministry spokesman, Abdul Kareem al-Kinani.
A suicide bomber detonated explosives in his car at an Iraqi army checkpoint in the northern town of Tall Afar, killing three civilians and injuring 15, including Iraqi soldiers, said the city's mayor, Brig. Najim Abdullah.
Controversy erupted over the Tharthar raid.
Ishaqi police Capt. Mohammed Faisal said that two houses belonging to two brothers were destroyed in the bombing. Khalaf Muhammad, 41, a farmer in the Tharthar area, also said that two houses were bombed and that 18 people lived in them. He said neighbors found the bodies of women and children in the rubble.
The Associated Press released a photo of a man holding a dead child at the bombing site. Another news agency, Agence-France Presse, also showed photographs of dead children.
Asked about the photos, Garver said troops who conducted the raid reported that they had found no children.
"We didn't see anything in those photos that specifically link the children to the airstrike," he said. "We weren't sure from these photos what was what."
Garver said that the two women whom troops reported killing were suspected insurgents. "There's nothing to indicate they were noncombatants," he said.
The troops also found AK-47 assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-personnel mines, explosives, blasting caps and suicide vests at the site, the military said.
This is not the first time residents of Ishaqi have accused American troops of misconduct. This spring, a U.S. military investigation cleared U.S. soldiers of killing 11 civilians before calling for an airstrike in a March 15 raid on a suspected insurgent hideout.
The military would not disclose the nationalities of the coalition forces involved in Friday's raid, but U.S. troops make up the largest contingent of forces in the country.
Raids also occurred in southern Iraq on Friday, with 1,000 British and Danish troops conducting a pre-dawn sweep of houses to arrest suspects in murders, kidnappings and attacks on coalition forces, according to a statement from the British military. Four suspects were arrested, the military said.
Contributing: Naseer Nouri, Naseer Mehdawi.