Girl, 11 dies in Iraq attacks

Three people, including an 11-year-old girl, have been killed in a series of co-ordinated attacks on top Iraqi police bases.

More than a dozen of the 60 insurgents – believed to be al-Qaida in Iraq fighters – were captured after battles lasting two hours.

The masked attackers drove into the city of Samarra last night in about 20 vehicles, including pickups with machine-guns, then split into small groups and assaulted four police checkpoints and a headquarters building, a Samarra police official said.

One policeman and two civilians – a woman and an 11-year-old girl – were killed in the fighting in the city 60 miles north of Baghdad, and nine others were injured including a police commando and three children.

There were no details on insurgent casualties, but police arrested 14 suspects, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

The attack came after early morning assaults by suspected al Qaida fighters on two villages to the south-east of Samarra near Baqouba, where fighters bombed the house of a local Sunni sheikh and kidnapped a group of mostly women.

Residents were finally able to drive off the attackers and end the deadly rampage, but not before 17 villagers, including seven women, were killed. Ten al Qaida gunmen also died.

Elsewhere, the US command said today that Iraqi troops and US Special Forces raided a home in the Hit area and seized an al-Qaida suspect believed to have shot down an American helicopter in 2004.

The forces detained the suspect and a “second person of interest” in the raid on Wednesday, and found an assault rifle as well as numerous identification cards and passports.

In addition to the helicopter attack, the primary suspect - whose name was not released – is believed to be involved in roadside bombing and sniper attacks on US and Iraqi forces in the region, 140 85 miles west of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

The twin attacks near the Diyala provincial capital of Baquoba – a city 60 35 miles north-east of Baghdad that has been the focus of recent major US-Iraqi military operations against alleged al Qaida fighters and Shiite militiamen - hit a Shiite village and a Sunni village with the same ferocity but apparently different motives.