Baghdad, Iraq – U.S. troops battled al-Qaeda in west Baghdad on Thursday after Sunni residents challenged the militants and called for American help to end furious gunfire that kept students from final exams and forced people in the neighborhood to huddle indoors.
Also Thursday, the American military reported the deaths of three more soldiers, two killed Wednesday in a roadside bombing in Baghdad and one who died of wounds from a roadside bomb attack northwest of the capital on Tuesday.
At least 122 American forces have died in May, the third-deadliest month of the Iraq conflict.
Backed by helicopter gunships, American forces joined the two- day battle in the mostly Sunni Amariyah district, according to a councilman and other residents.
The fight reflects a trend that U.S. and Iraqi officials have been trumpeting recently to the west in Anbar province, once considered the headquarters of the Sunni insurgency. Many Sunni tribes in the province have banded together to fight al-Qaeda, claiming the terrorist group is more dangerous than American forces.
Although al-Qaeda is a Sunni organization opposed to the Shiite-dominated government, its ruthlessness and reliance on foreign fighters have alienated many Sunnis in Iraq.
The district councilman said the al-Qaeda leader in Amariyah, known as Haji Hameed, was killed and 45 other fighters were detained.
Saif M. Fakhry, an Associated Press Television News cameraman, was shot twice and killed in the turmoil in Amariyah on Thursday. Fakhry, 26, was the fifth AP employee to die violently in the Iraq war and the third killed since December.
In western Iraq on Thursday, a suicide bomber hit a police recruiting center in Fallujah, and there were conflicting reports about the death toll. Police said as many as 25 people were killed, but the U.S. military said just one policeman died.
Elsewhere, three policemen and three civilians were killed and 15 civilians were wounded when a suicide truck bomber struck a communications center on the western outskirts of Ramadi, according to Anbar provincial security adviser Col. Tariq Youssef Mohammed.
American forces, meanwhile, continued Thursday with the search for five kidnapped Britons in and around Baghdad’s Sadr City district. The five were abducted from a Finance Ministry building Tuesday.
A procession of mourners marched through Sadr City behind a small bus carrying the coffins of two people who police said were killed in a U.S. helicopter strike before dawn.
The U.S. military said it had no report of airstrikes in Sadr City.
