Nine Iraqi soldiers were killed today when a roadside bomb destroyed a bus in the volatile north, while at least seven people were killed in a US-Iraqi raid in western Iraq, security sources said.
The soldiers killed were off duty and on their way to spend leisure time at their homes, said a police source in Mosul, considered al-Qaeda's last urban stronghold in Iraq, and an army source in the joint coordination office of Nineveh province.
Five soldiers and a bus driver were wounded in the blast in a village 30km west of Mosul, the sources said.
Insurgents have launched steady attacks on Iraqi police and troops in recent weeks. The US military formally ended combat operations in August, over seven years after the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.
The US military said the overnight counterterrorism raid in the western city of Falluja, in which at least seven people died, was Iraqi-planned and led.
A local police commander said one of the dead was a former Iraqi army colonel. A police major said the gunbattle lasted four hours. The two police officials asked not to be identified.
At least four other people, including a 90-year-old woman, were wounded in the raid, which took place in the Hay Jubail district of Falluja in western Anbar province, the sources said.
A person whose home is in the neighbourhood said residents opened fire on the troops because they thought they were under attack, and eight people were killed in the ensuing gunbattle.
But another neighbour, Juma Yasin, said no one from the neighbourhood fired shots.
"We were sleeping (outside) when suddenly we heard very heavy shooting. We immediately entered our houses and when it was finished we went out and found those people killed," he said. "There was no resistance at all."
Falluja was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting after the 2003 US-led invasion. The vast desert province of Anbar is Iraq's Sunni heartland and was a haven for al-Qaeda insurgents.
Overall violence has fallen sharply over the past three years but a stubborn Sunni Islamist insurgency continues to carry out regular attacks. Iraqi forces took the lead entirely on August 31st in the fight against insurgents when the US military formally ended combat operations in Iraq.
Reuters