Ramadi, Iraq ? Led by informants, U.S. soldiers swept into homes in Baghdad and several outlying towns Monday in pursuit of Saddam Hussein loyalists who have been ambushing American forces. At least 59 Iraqis were detained, most taken away blindfolded and handcuffed.

The soldiers also dug up back yards in a search for heavy arms, but the U.S. military announced no major weapons discoveries.

Ten Americans were wounded in ambushes on two convoys despite the U.S. campaign to put down resistance across Iraq’s Sunni heartland where Saddam’s support was strongest.

The two rocket-propelled grenade attacks reinforced the belief that Saddam loyalists were reorganizing. Residents of homes raided over the past two days warned that the U.S. operations were only fueling hostility and anti-American attacks.

For weeks, American forces have been targets of hit-and-run assaults, most in the central “Sunni belt” north and west of Baghdad. About a dozen U.S. soldiers have been killed by hostile fire since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat over.

The latest ambushes came Sunday. In the first, the grenade fire set fire to a civilian bus that was passing a military convoy near the town of Mushahidah, about 15 miles north of Baghdad, seriously wounding two soldiers and lightly wounding six others.

The second attack hit a U.S. convoy in Dujayl, a town 35 miles north of Baghdad, lightly wounding two soldiers, said Army spokesman Capt. John Morgan.

The U.S. Central Command blamed the ambushes on hard-core loyalists of the ousted regime who “continue to put innocent civilians at risk.”

Troops from the Army’s 1st Armored Division arrested 44 people in Baghdad, including three suspects in a June 1 grenade attack on U.S. soldiers guarding the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad’s Azamiyah neighborhood, where support for Saddam remains high.

That attack injured two U.S. soldiers and sparked a firefight that killed two Iraqis.

Thirteen men detained during the day were taken to a palace north of Baghdad that once belonged to Saddam’s son Odai. The prisoners knelt or sat on concrete blocks surrounded by concertina wire. All wore white blindfolds and some had duct tape over their mouths.

During a raid Monday night, troops took 31 more Iraqis prisoner outside the Abu Hanifa mosque and at an outdoor cafe, where soldiers lined men who had been playing backgammon and drinking tea up against a fence, searched them and loaded them handcuffed onto trucks.