Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraqi police and soldiers rounded up nearly 60 people Friday in security crackdowns in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra, and the U.S. military reported the death of an American soldier in a bombing.

At least 22 people were detained and weapons were seized in raids before dawn Friday in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, the Iraqi army said.

An additional 37 people – including five Palestinians and a Syrian – were arrested in predawn raids in Baghdad’s Dora district, the Interior Ministry said. The neighborhood is a mostly Sunni Arab area and has been the scene of frequent bombings, ambushes and assassinations.

Sunni Arab politicians have complained that raids by the Shiite-led Interior Ministry have inflamed sectarian tensions as politicians seek to form a new government that will include all communities and calm the Sunni-led insurgency. Shiite officials counter that Sunni militants have killed many police and soldiers.

The U.S. command said Friday that an American soldier was killed the previous evening in a roadside bombing north of the capital. It was the sixth American military death this month and brought to 2,248 the number of U.S. service members to have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

A British soldier was killed Thursday in a traffic accident in southern Iraq.

Also Friday, German officials appealed to the kidnappers of two German engineers to free them and make contact to begin negotiations. In a tape aired Tuesday by Al-Jazeera television, the kidnappers threatened to kill the captives unless Germany cut off all links to Iraq within 72 hours.

In a statement broadcast by Al-Jazeera, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged the kidnappers to release Thomas Nitschke and Rene Braeunlich. They were seized Jan. 24 in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad.

At least five foreigners were kidnapped last month in Iraq: the Germans, two Kenyan engineers and U.S. journalist Jill Carroll. Her kidnappers have threatened to kill her unless all Iraqi women in custody are freed.