US forces arrest Iraqi Islamic Party leader

US troops detained the head of Iraq's largest Sunni Muslim political party during a house raid in western Baghdad today, a top party official and police said.

Mohsen Abdul Hamid, head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, was detained by American soldiers along with his three sons and four guards, said party-secretary-general Ayad al-Samarei.

"The party demands the immediate release of its chief who represents a large sector of the Iraqi people," the party said in a statement. "This irresponsible behaviour will only complicate the situation."

A police official confirmed the arrests. US officials could not immediately confirm the detentions.

Sunni Muslims were Iraq's dominant community under Saddam Hussein, but they have lost their influence since the dictator's ousting two years ago and the country's predominant Shiite community gained political power.

The country's raging insurgency is believed to be driven mainly from disaffected Iraqi Sunnis and extremist Islamists from neighbouring, predominantly Sunni Arab states.

Tensions have been high in recent weeks during a spate of violence, some which has demonstrated Sunni-Shiite tensions. Sunni and Shiite religious leaders have been trading accusations against each other's communities amid the killings of hundreds of people, including Shiite and Sunni clerics.

Hamid, aged in his late 60s, is regarded as a moderate Islamic leader. He was a member of the now dissolved US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and has headed his party since the 1970s.