Troops successfully battle extremists

An Iraqi boy stands next to a shrapnel-ridden bus after a bombing Thursday in eastern Baghdad. Police said a bomb left in a plastic bag inside the bus traveling through the mostly Shiite district of Baladiyat killed two passengers and injured 10.

U.S. Deaths

As of Thursday, at least 3,900 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

? U.S. forces said they waged successful battles against Sunni and Shiite extremists and announced Thursday they had seized two men possibly linked to the capture of three American soldiers earlier this year.

The battles north and south of Baghdad came as the military seeks to take advantage of the improving security situation in Iraq to carry out targeted operations against extremist groups and the foreign-led al-Qaida in Iraq.

In recent weeks, the Americans have been fighting al-Qaida extremists in the area around Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of the capital. The battle against insurgent groups has steadily moved away from Anbar province and Baghdad, and is now focused on the fringes of Diyala province.

“Coalition forces killed 12 terrorists, detained 37 suspects and freed one hostage during a multiday operation from Dec. 22 to 25 to disrupt al-Qaida networks near Muqdadiyah in the Diyala River Valley,” an announcement said.

In another operation targeting a Shiite extremist group southeast of Baghdad, U.S. military forces killed 11 militants on Thursday. They were reportedly members of an extremist group that had broken away from radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

Al-Sadr has declared a cease-fire and said that any Mahdi Army members who do not abide by his freeze will no longer be considered members of the powerful militia. The August cease-fire came after al-Sadr reportedly began losing control of some of the more extremist elements and death squads in his militia.

The cease-fire has been credited for contributing significantly to a 60 percent decline in violence over the past six months. Other contributing factors included an influx of thousands of U.S. troops and the formation of mostly Sunni groups of paid volunteers who agreed to battle al-Qaida for the U.S. military.

The battle against the Shiite extremists took place in the early morning hours in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, a local police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

The officer said eight militia members were killed; the U.S. military said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that it killed an “estimated” 11 fighters. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

In a later statement, the U.S. military said the operation was targeting a suspect who was “reportedly responsible for attacks against Coalition forces.”

The military also said it seized two suspects linked to the capture of three American soldiers taken during a May ambush near Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad. The suspects were captured Monday and Tuesday in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.