US forces arrest eight in Iraqi rebel stronghold

US forces arrested eight rebel suspects in a stronghold of US resistance north-west of Baghdad, the military said yesterday.

Those arrested include an ex-colonel accused of recruiting guerrillas and four suspected associates of fugitive former vice president Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who is believed to have a leading role in Iraq’s insurgency.

Three US soldiers died yesterday. Two US soldiers and an Iraqi translator were killed by a bomb in Baghdad.

A Polish soldier died when a colleague’s gun fired accidentally in Babylon, south of Baghdad, hours after a visit by Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski. In Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, gunmen fatally shot judge Youssef Murad in his car.

Also in Mosul rebels fired a rocket- propelled grenade at a convoy of four US Humvees, wounding a soldier.