Baghdad - US soldiers operating with Iraqi counterparts near the Iraqi-Syrian border on Wednesday shot and killed an Iraqi man in a raid on a building, Iraqi police and the US military said. The incident took place as US and Iraqi forces searched a building in the Mosul region for the leader of a militant cell "suspected of facilitating the transport of foreign terrorists into Iraq," the US military said in a statement.
US and Iraqi forces identified four men as associates of the suspected al-Qaeda cell leader and sequestered them in the building, according to the statement.
"One of the four suspects failed to comply with verbal instructions from the security team, became combative and presented an imminent threat to others," the US military statement said. "In response to the threat, US forces shot and killed the aggressor."
Iraqi forces arrested the other three men, Iraqi police and the US military said.
The killing came at a time when the United States has tried to downplay its continued military presence in Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has sought to turn US forces' withdrawal from most Iraqi cities and towns last summer into political capital, marking the occasion with a national holiday, a parade, and wall-to-wall patriotic songs on state media.
And while US combat forces continue to operate alongside Iraqi forces in particularly volatile areas of the country, such as the region around Mosul, officials from the two sides in Iraq make scant mention of this.
The incident came as a series of bomb blasts left at least two dead and at least 21 injured in Baghdad, some 400 kilometres to the south, police there said.
Police Lieutenant Colonel Shalal Obeid and his wife were killed in the western Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib when insurgents detonated explosives planted around his house, police told the Aswat al-Iraq news agency. A civilian passerby was injured by the blast, they added.
Earlier, blasts in the Baghdad neighbourhoods of Mahmudiyya, Sulaikh, Ataba, Adhamiya and Iskan left at least 20 people injured, police said.
Relations between Iraq and Syria have been strained since two bomb attacks on August 19 and October 25 killed altogether 255 people, wounded hundreds, and caused serious damage to buildings housing the ministries of foreign affairs, finance and justice in downtown Baghdad.
Iraq has accused Syria of harbouring ex-Baathists it suspects of plotting and financing the attacks, and of not doing enough to stop foreign insurgents from entering Iraq. Last month the government allocated millions of dollars to improving security along its northwestern border with Syria.
