US troops kill 10 insurgents in al-Qaida hunt US troops in Iraq killed 10 insurgents – three of them wearing suicide vests - in a raid today as American forces stepped up the hunt for terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

One insurgent was wounded in the pre-dawn raid at a safe house as the troops searched for “an al-Qaida terrorist leader” about 25 miles south-west of the US air base in Balad, north of Baghdad, the military said.

Troops surprised a guard and shot him before he could fire his pistol, the statement said. As the insurgent fell, he detonated a suicide vest, the statement added.

Two more insurgents were killed inside the hideout and the others outside as they tried to escape, the statement said. Two of the dead were also found to be wearing explosive vests.

The statement did not say whether al-Zarqawi was the target of the raid or whether anyone escaped.


It was the fourth raid reported by the US command against al-Zarqawi’s network since April 16, when American troops stormed a house in Youssifiyah just south of the capital, killing six people,
including a woman, and arresting five people, among them an unidentified al Qaida official.

However, CNN reported that the captives said al-Zarqawi had been in a nearby house.

While intensified operations are being mounted against al-Zarqawi’s network, US and Iraqi officials are making overtures to other Sunni Arab groups, hoping to convince them to abandon the insurgency and join the political process under a new government of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.