BAGHDAD, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- Seven U.S. Marines and three Iraqi national guard troops were killed near the pro-Saddam city of Fallujah Monday, a U.S. military spokesman said.
A vehicle packed with explosives blew up, destroying two Humvees, and killing the men. The apparent suicide bomb site was sealed off by Marines from the 1st Expeditionary Unit, who ferried the injured on medical helicopters to the combat support hospital in Baghdad. It was the deadliest day for U.S. troops in Iraq since May, when nine U.S. soldiers died in three separate bomb attacks on a single day.
U.S. forces have not patrolled inside of Fallujah since April, when four American contractors were beheaded, leading to three weeks of fierce fighting. Americans agreed to an Iraq force to patrol Fallujah to end the conflict.
Separately, Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadim announced Monday that Iraq police took a relative of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri into custody Sunday, rather than Saddam Hussein's right-hand man. Several Iraqi officials Sunday insisted the man was al-Douri before he had undergone conclusive medical tests. Al-Douri is believed to be running the 16-month-old insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq.
"This is also a man wanted by coalition forces, but he is not as important as al-Douri," Kadim said.
Conflicting reports indicating 70 to 125 al-Douri supporters were killed when he was brought into custody also appeared to be false, Kadim said. U.S. forces have put out a $10 million bounty for al-Douri's arrest. He was the vice chairman of the Arab Baath Socialist Party under the former regime, reporting to Saddam Hussein.
The former president was found in early December in a hole in the ground near the spot where Iraqi forces backed by U.S. tanks and helicopters arrested the man thought to be al-Douri's relative.
In southern Iraq, police forces said they captured 500 suspected Mahdi Army militants. After three weeks of fierce fighting in the holy city of Najaf, the militants, loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada Sadr, are observing an uneasy truce with U.S. troops in southern Iraq and in Sadr City, a poor slum on the outskirts of Baghdad.
And in Latifiya, on the main highway between Baghdad and Najaf, where three weeks of heavy fighting is believed to have killed hundreds of Iraqis, 12 police were said to have died in an operation to root out militants blamed for taking hostages. Numerous hostages have been taken in the south in recent weeks, including a British journalist who was quickly released and two French journalists who have been in captivity since Aug. 20.
