The U.S. military in Iraq says 15 civilians and 19 insurgents were killed Thursday in a coalition raid on a building where al-Qaida terrorists were gathered northwest of Baghdad.
A military statement says the operation targeted senior al-Qaida leaders in the Lake Thar Thar region. It says troops were fired upon by militants, and they responded with an airstrike.
The military says ground forces secured the area after the fighting. It says 15 terrorists, six women, and nine children were killed, and several others were wounded.
A military spokesman, Major Brad Leighton, said coalition forces regret the civilian deaths. He added that militants deliberately endangered the civilians with their presence.
Also Thursday, Iraqi officials say a suicide bomber killed eight people and wounded 25 others when he rammed his explosive-laden car into a cafe in southeastern Baghdad.
And the U.S. military on Thursday said it recovered weapons on Tuesday near an Iraqi's house that once belonged to missing and dead U.S. soldiers.
In other violence, Iraqi officials say a car bomb killed at least seven people in the northern city of Kirkuk. Authorities say 50 people were injured in the blast in a busy shopping district.
The bomb exploded as a convoy passed carrying a local police chief, who was among the wounded.
VOA correspondent Jim Randle reports from Irbil that victims of the suicide bombing were mostly shoppers preparing for the upcoming feast of Eid al-Fitr that ends the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Elsewhere in Iraq, U.S. military officials say two coalition soldiers were killed, and 40 people were injured, in a mortar attack Wednesday at Camp Victory, a major U.S. military base near the Baghdad airport. The military did not disclose the nationalities of those killed.
Some information for this report provided by AP.
