Baghdad, Iraq – U.S. forces sealed off a house in the northern city of Mosul where eight suspected al-Qaeda members died in a gunfight – some by their own hand to avoid capture.
A U.S. official said Sunday that efforts were underway to determine if terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead. But Washington said Sunday that it was “highly unlikely” that he was.
Insurgents, meanwhile, killed an American soldier and a Marine in separate attacks over the weekend, while a British soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in the south.
In Washington, a U.S. official said the identities of the terrorist suspects killed in the Saturday raid were unknown. Asked if they could include al-Zarqawi, the official replied: “There are efforts underway to determine if he was killed.”
On Saturday, police Brig. Gen. Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al-Qaeda operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the house in the northeastern part of the city.
During the intense gun battle that followed, three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves to avoid capture, Iraqi officials said. Eleven Americans were wounded, the U.S. military said. Such intense resistance often suggests an attempt to defend a high-value target.
But Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said reports of al-Zarqawi’s death were “highly unlikely and not credible.”
American soldiers controlled the site Sunday, and residents said helicopters flew over the area throughout the day. Some residents said the tight security was reminiscent of the July 2003 operation in which Saddam Hussein’s sons, Odai and Qusai, were killed in Mosul.
The U.S. soldier killed Sunday near the capital was assigned to the Army’s Task Force Baghdad and was hit by small-arms fire, the military said. The Marine, assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, died of wounds suffered the day before in Karmah, a village outside Fallujah to the west of the capital.
In the southern city of Basra, a roadside bomb killed a British soldier and wounded four others, the British Ministry of Defense said. The ministry said 98 British soldiers have died in the Iraq conflict.
The U.S. military also said Sunday that 24 people – including another Marine and 15 civilians – were killed the day before in an ambush on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol in Hadithah, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad in the volatile Euphrates River valley.
According to the U.S. statement, the attack began Saturday with a roadside bomb detonating next to the Marine’s vehicle, followed by a heavy volley of fire from insurgents.
“Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another,” the statement said.
The three American deaths brought to at least 2,093 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Meanwhile, four women were killed Sunday night when gunmen stormed their home in a Christian district of eastern Baghdad, police said, adding that valuables were stolen and the motive for the attack appeared to have been robbery.
The deaths occurred at the end of a violent three-day period in which 140 Iraqi civilians died in a series of bombings and suicide attacks – most targeting Shiite Muslims. The victims included 76 people who died Friday in simultaneous suicide bombings at two Shiite mosques in Khanaqin and 36 more killed the next day by a suicide car bomber who detonated his vehicle amid mourners at a Shiite funeral north of the capital.
