American forces battled Iraqi police and gunmen Friday, killing six policemen, after a U.S. raid to capture an Iraqi police lieutenant accused of leading a cell of Shiite militiamen, the military said. Seven gunmen also died in the fight.
The Americans captured the lieutenant in a pre-dawn raid in Baghdad, but the soldiers came under "heavy and accurate fire" from a nearby Iraqi police checkpoint, as well as intense firing from rooftops and a church, the military said in a statement, cited by the AP.
here were no casualties among the U.S. troops, but seven gunmen and six of the policemen firing on the Americans were killed, the statement said.
The captured lieutenant was a "high-ranking" leader of a cell suspected of helping coordinate Iranian support for Shiite extremists in Iraq as well as carrying out roadside bombings against mortar attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, the U.S. military said.
This incident reported hours after President George W. Bush insisted the Iraq war can still be won. "I believe we can succeed in Iraq, and I know we must," Bush said at a news conference.
The House of Representatives answered Bush with a vote to withdraw most combat troops by April. The House voted by 223 votes to 201 to pass the measure.
The troop withdrawal deadlines have almost no chance of becoming law as the Democrats are well short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a Bush veto.
Bush reiterated that he is not ready to consider a change of course until the commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, issues his assessment of the troop "surge" strategy in September.
