A double suicide bombing killed at least 27 people in a Shia town near the Iraqi capital on Monday, while US forces released a Sunni political leader they had detained "by mistake". Iraqi and US troops with sniffer dogs, meanwhile, scoured Baghdad's infamous Haifa Street as part of Operation Lightning. In the town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, two suicide bombers detonated their explosives belts in a crowd of about 500 former police commandos outside local government offices, police said.
"We have 27 people killed and 118 wounded," an interior ministry source said.
The policemen had come to collect back-pay in the town, where a bomb in February killed 118 people.
The group of al Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, in Internet statements.
The US military also said Monday that it had ended a joint US-Iraqi sweep in the north-west of the country around the Euphrates River valley town of Haditha.
"Twelve insurgents were killed and another 30 are being held and questioned," said a statement announcing the end of the "highly successful operation".
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