Shiite fighters captured in Iraq
US and Iraqi forces, backed by Polish army helicopters, swept through Shiite militia strongholds south of Baghdad, rounding up dozens of militants and killing two.
Iraqi police said 30 suspected fighters linked to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army were grabbed in a pre-dawn house-to-house search by US and Iraqi raiders in two eastern neighbourhoods in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad.
Rival Shiite militias are engaged in grabs for power in the oil-rich south of the country, as British forces are drawing down.
But US commanders have reported significant inroads against both Shiite militias and al-Qaida in Iraq fighters across the fertile agriculture belt nearer to the capital.
