by Salam Farrag
MAHMUDIYA, Iraq, Sept 5 (AFP) - US troops battled rebels Sunday in the northern town of Tall Afar for a second day running, while Iraqi and US forces arrested hundreds of suspected militants in the heartland of the Sunni Muslim insurgency.
Iraqi police and national guardsmen, assisted by US forces, raided the town of Latifiya, 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Baghdad, marking the first time the interim government has taken decisive action against a Sunni stronghold since it was sworn in more than two months ago.
Twelve policemen were killed and 17 people wounded in the operation, with 500 suspected "terrorists" arrested and a large haul of weapons seized, including five barrels of TNT, an Iraqi intelligence officer said.
"We have arrested 500 suspects, but there were no Arab or foreign fighters among them," a captain from the Iraqi national guard's intelligence services in the nearby town of Mahmudiya told AFP.
Fighting ended around midnight (2000 GMT Saturday) "because our operation was completed," said the officer, whose forces were backed by a small US force.
"We found large quantities of explosives, five 300-litre barrels of TNT, anti-tank rockets and mortars," he said.
The officer said that slogans urging the population to fight the police had been scribbled on the walls.
Speaking from his hospital bed in Baghdad where he was being treated for bullet wounds to the head and chest, police lieutenant colonel Mohammed Kazem Hamza told AFP: "The goal was to hunt terrorists and kick them out of Latifiya."
"At first, we were not able to control the situation because we were in a farming area and the attackers were hiding in farms," he said.
In Latifiya, residents expressed bitterness over the iron-fisted raid.
The town is part of a virtual no-go zone for US troops, Iraqi police and foreigners and has earned the name "Fallujah's second head" after the Sunni rebel strongold west of Baghdad.
The spot is where two French journalists, held by a group calling itself the Islamic Army of Iraq, disappeared on August 20. Experts have expressed worry the fighting could delay their release.
A leading radical Iraqi cleric Sheikh Mehdi al-Sumaidaie issued a fatwa or Islamic decree demanding the immediate release of the two reporters -- Le Figaro correspondent Georges Malbrunot and RFI reporter Christian Chesnot.
The Muslim leader, an influential figure among extremist Sunni Muslim groups, also lambasted the Iraqi government and US forces for staging the raid in Latifiya, saying it had harmed efforts for their release.
Meanwhile, US troops and insurgents clashed in Tall Afar Sunday, which the military claims serves as a way station for militants slipping into Iraq from Syria.
Fighting erupted after gunmen fired on a US army convoy outside the town, 60 kilometres (40 miles) west of Mosul, said police lieutenant Ghaith Mohammed Al-Obeidi.
US soldiers poured into Tall Afar and clashes broke out in the town centre, lasting for about two hours before the US and Iraqi forces withdrew, he said, adding that US helicopters opened fire on insurgents.
Thirteen Iraqis were killed and 53 wounded Saturday when a US army battalion, backed by Iraqi national guardsmen, launched an offensive in Tall Afar on the hunt for militants infiltrating Iraq from Syria.
Elsewhere, an Iraqi nuclear scientist was assassinated in the Sunni Muslim insurgent bastion of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, his brother told AFP Sunday.
Mohammed Toki Hussein al-Talakani, who had practised nuclear physics since 1984, was shot dead on Saturday as he was driving in Mahmudiya, Alaa Toki Hussein said.
The body of an Egyptian was found Sunday on a road north of the Iraqi town of Tikrit, in the latest in a string of gruesome murders of foreigners suspected of working with the Americans in Iraq.
An Iraqi militant group also announced it has taken four Jordanian drivers hostage, Al-Jazeera television said Sunday, showing footage of the latest victims of a spate of abductions of foreigners in Iraq.
Elsewhere, two Iraqis were killed and five wounded Sunday in a US air raid near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad, medical sources said.
The US military did not confirm any aerial attack but said it raided the area after one of its bases came under attack.