US Marines on Saturday said they had launched a new counter-insurgency operation, the latest in a series of sweeps designed to root out militant bases in Iraq's Euphrates valley. Operation Scimitar involved about 500 US troops and 100 Iraqis, making it about half the scale of Operation Sword and Operation Spear in the last three weeks.
The military said the marines had detained 22 suspected militants since the raid was launched in secret in the village of Zaidon 30km south-east of Fallujah on Thursday.
Washington says the western Euphrates valley between the Syrian border and Baghdad is a conduit for foreign militants behind a wave of suicide bombings that worsened after the Shia- and Kurdish-led government took power in April.
Marines in western Iraq have launched operations just about weekly, hoping to clear insurgents out of town after town.
During Operation Spear, they called in air strikes and left much of the border town of Karbala in ruins after battles they said killed dozens of insurgents. Operation Sword was quieter, with no heavy resistance reported.
This month has seen a relative lull in car bombings - down to around one a day in Baghdad from twice that last month. But US commanders say the total number of insurgent attacks is fairly stable, at 50-60 a day, and that there has been a shift toward other forms of violence, including attacks on diplomats.
ATTACKS ON DIPLOMATS: Offering condolences to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the killing of Cairo's envoy to Baghdad, who was abducted a week ago by al Qaeda militants, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani proposed a regional conference on fighting the violence.
Mubarak supported the proposal, Talabani's office said in a statement. The Baghdad government and its sponsors in Washington have been trying to stem an exodus of diplomats after other attacks on the Pakistani and Bahraini envoys in the capital.
The violence appears aimed at thwarting the government's efforts to win greater recognition from cautious Muslim and Arab states. Referring to the killing of Egypt's Ihab el-Sherif, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said: "This cowardly act is an attempt to terrorise a brotherly Arab Muslim country."
Egypt said it was cutting staff at its embassy after its mission chief was kidnapped and killed by al Qaeda's Iraq wing.
Other Arab countries, mostly ruled by Sunnis, have yet to give their diplomats in Baghdad full ambassador status, although Iraq says Jordan and Syria will soon do so and Egypt had planned to before Sherif was killed.