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US claims capturing head of Iraq militant cell

BAGHDAD, Tuesday (Reuters) U.S. forces have captured the leader of a suspected militant cell during a raid in the northern Iraqi town of Kirkuk, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

A statement said U.S. troops captured Hussein Salman Mohammad al-Jabburi during a raid on Monday afternoon.

It said Jabburi was believed to have led a Kirkuk-based militant group with links to Ansar Al Sunna, another militant group which is itself believed to be linked to Ansar al Islam, a northern Iraqi Islamic militant network. Washington says Ansar al Islam, whose mountain bases along the border with Iran were destroyed in the early stages of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, had connections with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

It has also been associated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant believed to be behind a string of suicide bombings and beheadings of hostages in Iraq.

The U.S. military said Jabburi was being held for questioning. No injuries were reported in the raid, it added. Meanwhile U.S. warplanes struck a suspected insurgent hideout in rebel-held Falluja on Tuesday and U.S. tanks and aircraft bombarded areas of northeastern Baghdad, stepping up military operations against guerrillas.

In Falluja, the military said it had hit a house used by followers of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose organisation has claimed responsibility for several attacks in Iraq and the beheadings of foreign hostages.

It said the air strike had targeted high-level members of Zarqawi's group, but did not say how many people were killed. The U.S. military last week claimed to have killed around 100 of Zarqawi's followers in the past few weeks.

In Sadr City, a poor Shi'ite Muslim district of northeastern Baghdad, residents said U.S. aircraft and tanks bombarded homes in some neighbourhoods, ratcheting up operations against Shi'ite militiamen who have the area largely under their control.

In a statement, U.S. forces said they had conducted "precision strikes" on various targets, "destroying four insurgent forces and several enemy positions".

Ealier an Iranian diplomat taken hostage in Iraq last month has been released by his captors but the fate of at least 11 other foreigners, including a Briton threatened with beheading, remained unclear on Tuesday.

Al Jazeera television said late on Monday an Egyptian and two Iraqis kidnapped a few days ago had been freed, and quoted Egyptian diplomatic sources in Baghdad as saying the remaining five Egyptian telecoms workers would also be released.

It was not immediately possible to verify the report. The release on Monday of the diplomat, Fereidoun Jahani, comes as Jordan's King Abdullah warned in an interview to be published on Tuesday Iraq was too unsafe to hold elections as planned in January and if it did, extremists would do well.

The comments go further than ones by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell saying Iraq's insurgency was worsening.

Excluding troubled areas from the nationwide poll would only isolate Iraq's Sunnis and create deeper divisions in the country, Abdullah told the Paris daily Le Figaro according to a text distributed in advance.

Jahani was seized as he travelled by car south of Baghdad by a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq. It was not clear if he was being held by the same group when he was freed.

The Iranian embassy in Baghdad said he was in good health.

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