At least 10 people were reported dead as Iraqi security forces clashed with armed men in Sunni districts north of Baghdad and the so-called triangle of death, officials said.
Four people were killed and nine wounded when Iraqi security forces clashed with armed Sunni villagers south of Baghdad, medics said. According to AFP, the battle erupted after Iraqi soldiers and police raided the village of Albu Mustafa, in the heart of the "triangle of death" south of Baghdad.
Two soldiers, a police officer and a gunman were killed, police and medics said. Four soldiers and five gunmen were injured.
In Baghdad, an employee of the provincial government was shot dead in the street by gunmen on Saturday morning, a ministry official said. About an hour later, another man was killed in similar fashion in the same district of eastern Baghdad, the official conveyed.
To the north, three Iraqis were killed in shootings and a bomb blast, while the body of businessman was discovered, secuirty sources said.
A soldier and a civilian died in Samarra.
Another seven people were wounded, including four children, in a nearby gun battle, said a hospital doctor.
Near Balad, a civilian was killed and four soldiers wounded when a homemade bomb exploded as a military convoy went past, said police.
Meanwhile, the body of a 46-year-old businessman, Ahmed Abdelkader Abed, was found in Tuz, near Tikrit. The victim had been shot dead, said police.
Elsewhwew, a U.S. Marine was killed in action on Saturday in an area just south of the capital Baghdad, the military said on Sunday. The US command said the Marine was killed during "security and stability operations" in Babil province.
In another incident, the brother of Mosul's police chief was kidnapped Saturday, police said, three days after the official, Gen. Mohammed Ahmed al-Jubouri, threatened to destroy "rebel sanctuaries if insurgents did not surrender their weapons" within two weeks. Al-Jubouri said late Saturday that his brother was freed in a raid that netted nine of the kidnappers.
In the meantime, the United States wants Iraq to remain whole now that the first round of elections is over, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an attempt to reassure nervous Turkish leaders that Washington won't allow Iraqi Kurds to form a breakaway state.
Rice was to meet Sunday with Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul. She saw Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday.
"I'm here really in part to say to the Turks that we are fully committed, fully committed, to a unified Iraq," Rice said aboard the plane to Turkey. "We are making that message clear through all channels that we have in Iraq."
© 2005 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
