Shiite fighters captured in Iraq

US and Iraqi forces, backed by Polish army helicopters, swept through Shiite militia strongholds south of Baghdad, rounding up dozens of militants and killing two.

Iraqi police said 30 suspected fighters linked to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army were grabbed in a pre-dawn house-to-house search by US and Iraqi raiders in two eastern neighbourhoods in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad.