BAGHDAD - Seventeen insurgents were killed in a pitched battle northeast of Baghdad which also left two US and one Iraqi soldier dead, the US military said Tuesday, as the country's fractured Sunni Arab community struggled to choose a candidate for vice president.
A day ahead of the newly-elected parliament's fourth session, an Iraqi general was kidnapped and three bombings in the capital killed a civilian and a US soldier.
An hours-long battle erupted Monday between two Iraqi battalions, backed by US soldiers, and insurgents during a search for weapons outside Baladruz 70 kilometers (53 miles) northeast of Baghdad, US army Major Anton Alston said.
The fight lasted through to Tuesday morning and claimed the lives of two US and one Iraqi soldier as well as 17 insurgents, Alston said.
Another 11 Iraqi soldiers were wounded, he added.
US air support was called in, along with an estimated 100 US ground troops. Combat ceased Tuesday morning but the US and Iraqi forces were continuing their hunt for weapons and militants, Alston said.
The commander of an interior ministry armored brigade, Brigadier General Jalal Mohammed Salah was seized with an undetermined number of bodyguards from his car in the capital's Mansur district, US army Major Darryl Wright told AFP.
South of Baghdad, in the so-called triangle of death, police found a mass grave containing the beheaded bodies of 10 Iraqi soldiers.
The corpses found in Jurf al-Sahar, some 60 kilometers (nearly 40 miles) outside the capital, showed signs of torture, Lieutenant Yahya Salim said.
In Baghdad, a US soldier was killed and three men and a six-year-old girl wounded in a bombing in the restive Dura district, medical sources and the US military said.
A civilian was killed and two others wounded by a car bomb targeting an Iraqi army convoy in Amariyah in western Baghdad, a defense ministry official.
A high-ranking Iraqi army officer escaped unscathed from the attack.
A Sunni cleric was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in the capital while a policeman was killed in a raid in which two suspected insurgents were wounded and captured, security sources said.
Late Tuesday, a suicide car bomb exploded near an Iraqi army convoy, wounding five people on central Baghdad's Palestine street, an interior ministry source said.
South of the capital, a municipal councilor in the mainly Shiite city of Hilla was killed in another drive-by shooting.
In the main northern city of Mosul, four Iraqis, one of them a child, were wounded by a roadside bomb and small arms fire aimed at a passing US military convoy.
In the relatively calm south, a bomb targeting a police car in Basra killed one civilian and wounded two others, said Lieutenant Colonel Karim Al-Zeidi.
The persistent violence came as bickering continued over the allocation of posts in a new government, with the small number of Sunni Arab politicians elected to parliament trying to reach consensus on a common candidate for one of two vice presidency slots.
The heir to the deposed monarchy Sherif Ali bin Hussein, outgoing president Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar, and octogenarian elder statesman Adnan Pachachi have all expressed an interest in the post.
"Things are going badly, people are pushing in different directions," said Banyan al-Jarba, an aide to Sherif Ali.
The majority Shiites and second-place Kurds have agreed to reserve the vice presidency for the ousted Sunni Arab elite, which dominated Iraqi governments before the 2003 invasion, in a bid to stem its support for anti-US insurgents.
In the end, it looked like the Shiites and Kurds would make the final choice from three names -- Yawar, Pachachi, and Sunni MP Adnan Janabi -- suggested by an umbrella grouping of Sunni parties.
Shiite MP Saad Jawad hinted that Yawar, who is also favored by the Kurds, may emerge as the best consensus choice despite other Sunni desires.
"There is an agreement with the Kurds," he said, adding: "Our first choice is Mr Yawar."
The International Committee of the Red Cross meanwhile demanded an investigation into a riot at the US-run Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq.
"We are asking the US army to investigate the cause of the riot which happened at the detention centre," ICRC spokeswoman Rana Sidani told AFP.
The US military said 12 prisoners and four US guards were wounded in Friday's riot at Iraq's largest US-run prison.
The riot at the desert camp, where more than 6,000 prisoners are held, was first reported by aides of Shiite radical leader Moqtada Sadr, some of whose supporters are held there.
The ICRC spokeswoman said at least 14 detainees were lightly wounded, and possibly more, when US soldiers fired rubber bullets to end the riot, which happened as an ICRC delegation visited the camp.
The latest mutiny comes almost a year after details emerged of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that sullied the reputation of the US detention system in Iraq.

04/05/2005 17:16 GMT