Baghdad - An Iranian intelligence officer and an al-Qaeda terrorist network leader in Salahaddin province were killed in a US raid in the city of Samarra, while three people were killed and 13 wounded in another US attack in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City, sources said Tuesday. Twelve militants, including the reported Iranian intelligence officer and the al-Qaeda leader Abu Obeid al-Jazaeri, were killed in the US raid carried out Monday in Samarra, 125 kilometres north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, in Salahaddin province, according to an official report.
The unnamed intelligence officer was carrying an Iranian passport, but the report gave no further details.
The al-Jazaeri's wife was also killed in the operation.
In Sadr City, US soldiers raided neighbourhoods during the early hours of Tuesday, killing three and injuring 13, as US aircraft launched strikes during the arrest of some Mahdi Army militants, a witness told independent Voices of Iraq news agency.
Qassem al-Mudallal, director of al-Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City, said two bodies and 10 wounded were received during the early hours of Tuesday, while Weiam Ismail, director of Sadr hospital, said one body and three wounded men were received by the hospital.
The Mahdi Army, also known as Mahdi Militia or Jaish al Mahdi, was formed by Shiite cleric and leader Moqtada al-Sadr in 2003.
A member of al-Sadr's office said on condition of anonymity that the US troops stormed the house of a key Mahdi Army member but did not find him.
The US military did not comment on the incident.
On Tuesday morning, armed groups attacked an Iraqi army company in the village of Mekheisa in Abi Sayda district in Baquba, killing three soldiers and seriously wounding another, Voices of Iraq reported, citing an official security source.
Mekheisa, an al-Qaeda stronghold in Diyala province, is considered a hotbed of terrorists from other Arab countries and Afghanistan, who use the village's undergrowth as refuge, the source added.
Villages in Abi Sayda have recently witnessed several reconciliation meetings among Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders to fight terrorist groups.
Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, is some 60 kilometres north of Baghdad.
In another act of violence, four Iraqi policemen were killed in two separate attacks Tuesday in Mosul city in Nineveh province, Voices of Iraq quoted General Abdul-Kareem al-Juburi, the Nineveh police operations chief as saying.
He added that a group of gunmen opened fire at a patrol vehicle in the area of Karama in east Mosul, 400 kilometres north of Baghdad,
Other gunmen killed a policeman in Yarmuk in western Mosul in a drive-by attack, he said.
In other news, an explosive device went off near a police patrol on the main road linking Kirkuk to Mosul, wounding two policemen and destroying their vehicle, a Kirkuk security source told Voices of Iraq.
In the predominately Shiite city of Basra, 550 kilometres south of Baghdad, unknown gunmen killed an aide to top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, an official source from the city provincial council said Tuesday.
"Unknown gunmen stormed Monday night the house of Sayed Hussein al-Husaini in the Jiniynah neighbourhood in north Basra and killed him, the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity," the source told Voices of Iraq.
Al-Husaini, an al-Sistani representative in Basra, is also the Imam of the Shiite Mahtah mosque.
