U.S. forces detain suspected militant in Baghdad

By Ned Parker
Times Staff Writer

12:13 PM PDT, July 13, 2007

BAGHDAD — U.S. troops arrested a suspected militant leader today after a firefight that left six Iraqi police and seven gunmen dead.

U.S. forces were ambushed from rooftops, a church and a police checkpoint during the predawn raid in Baghdad meant to apprehend the militant, who American authorities think is funded by an Iranian security force. The troops called in fire from a fixed-wing aircraft, aiming directly in front of a police checkpoint that was the source of a small-arms barrage.

The U.S. military said the airstrike was meant as a warning and that the troops had tried to avoid hurting any police officers.

"Coalition forces returned fire in accordance with escalation-of-force rules. Initial reports indicate that approximately seven terrorists and six Iraqi police were killed in the firefight," the military said.

It was unclear if the detained fighter was a police officer. American authorities described him as a leader of the Special Groups, an alleged offshoot of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr's Al Mahdi militia that U.S. officials think receives backing from Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

The military accused the militant of coordinating logistical support from Iran for cells that strike U.S. forces with armor-piercing bombs and mortars and rockets.

At least three mortar rounds slammed today into Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, the site of the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government offices, where U.S. civilian government employees have been required in the last few days to wear body armor and helmets because of the rising threat of rocket and mortar attacks.

Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and one injured in the attack, an Iraqi security official said. Fire trucks and police cars raced through the Green Zone, and helicopters swooped overhead in the aftermath of the bombardment.

A fierce shelling Tuesday in the Green Zone, once the safest place in Iraq, killed three people, including a U.S. soldier, and wounded 18. Among the wounded were five Americans: two soldiers and three contract employees.

An Iraqi journalist with the New York Times in Baghdad was shot to death today on his way to work from Baghdad's southeastern Sadiyah district, the newspaper said in a statement.

Khalid W. Hassan, 23, was the third employee of a Western news organization killed in 24 hours. The paper said the circumstances of his death remained unclear.

On Thursday, an Iraqi photographer and his driver, both from the Reuters news agency, died in the crossfire of a battle between U.S. forces and gunmen in eastern Baghdad.

ned.parker@latimes.com

Times staff writer Raheem Salman contributed to this report.