Marines kill 25 insurgents in clashes

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. Marines killed 25 insurgents and captured 25 others during several hours of fierce fighting in Ramadi, a hotbed of the insurgency against U.S. and Iraqi forces, the American military said today.
The fighting Wednesday in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, wounded 14 U.S. servicemen, but none of the injuries were life-threatening. Ten of the wounded subsequently returned to duty, the Marines said.
In Baghdad, insurgents fought U.S. soldiers on Haifa Street, the scene of a shootout earlier this month, an unidentified hospital official told Associated Press Television News. Two Iraqis were reported wounded.
Interior Ministry official Sabah Khadum said Iraqi police and intelligence forces arrested 200 people, including several "non-Iraqi Arabs," during the Haifa Street operation and discovered a huge cache of weapons. U.S. and Iraqi officials have long complained that fighters from neighboring countries are battling coalition forces.
Body found
Meanwhile, Iraqi police found a decapitated body in an orange jumpsuit on the banks of the Tigris River in northern Iraq, police said today.
The identity of the body, discovered Wednesday night in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, was not immediately clear, police said.
The U.S. military and the Iraqi Interior Ministry said they had no information on the discovery, but the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry confirmed that a decapitated body was found. A headless body suspected of being that of a Bulgarian hostage was found July 14 in the Tigris. It has still not been definitively identified.
A group affiliated with Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said on July 14 that it had killed a Bulgarian hostage. Video broadcast on Al-Jazeera showed one of two Bulgarian hostages, later identified as Georgi Lazov, kneeling before three masked men. The fate of a second Bulgarian hostage remained unknown.
Taha Abdullah, a police official in Beiji, told The Associated Press that police found a new body Wednesday on the banks of the Tigris. Alongside the body was a head in a sack, he said.
"U.S. troops took the body to a hospital in Tikrit," Abdullah said.
Witnesses reported seeing a headless body in an orange jumpsuit at a hospital in Tikrit today.
Hostages
Also today, the Kenyan government called on all its citizens to leave Iraq immediately, and a government spokesman urged Iraqi militants to free three Kenyan hostages.
A group calling itself "The Holders of the Black Banners" announced Wednesday it had abducted the Kenyans, three Indians and an Egyptian. The group said it would behead a captive every 72 hours beginning Saturday night if their countries do not announce their intentions to withdraw troops and citizens from Iraq.
"We assure them that Kenya has no intent of interfering with the lives of the Iraqi people and that we are discouraging our citizens from participating in work that takes them to Iraq," government spokesman Alfred Mutua said.
Neither India, Kenya nor Egypt is part of the 160,000-member U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq. However, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi appealed last week to India and Egypt to send in troops.
In photos provided to AP, six of the hostages were shown standing behind three seated, masked gunmen. One hostage held a paper with the typed names of seven men -- presumably six of them the hostages -- their nationalities and personal details.
The names written were Ibrahim Khamis, Salm Faiz Khamis, Jalal Awadh, all from Kenya; Antaryami, Tilak Raj, Sukdev Singh, all from India; and Mohammed Ali Sanad, from Egypt.
More than 60 foreigners have been taken hostage in recent months in Iraq, where thousands of foreigners toil as contract workers for coalition forces, in crucial reconstruction jobs or as truck drivers hauling cargo for private companies.
The threat came two days after the Philippines withdrew its 51 peacekeepers from Iraq, acquiescing to the demands of militants holding a Filipino truck driver. Angelo dela Cruz returned to the Philippines today, two days after his release.
Iraqi and U.S. officials warned of a potential surge in threats and abductions when the Philippines withdrew its troops.
Fighting
The daylong clashes in Ramadi began after insurgents detonated a roadside bomb near a Marine convoy Wednesday afternoon in an ambush attempt. As many as 10 Iraqi fighters then attacked Marines with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades.
That skirmish led to ensuing engagements pitting members of the 1st Brigade Combat team against an estimated 75-100 insurgents, the Marines' statement said.
American ground forces backed by U.S. warplanes clashed with insurgents for hours, during which time the Marines safely detonated two homemade bombs, including one placed in a car.
Twenty-five insurgents died in the fighting and an additional 17 were wounded, the statement said.
Ramadi is located in Anbar Province, a Sunni-dominated area west of the Iraqi capital that has been a hotbed of anti-coalition insurgency.
Marines spokesman Lt. Col. T.V. Johnson said the situation in Ramadi was "relatively quiet" today and "Marines continue to operate from bases within the city, as they have since arriving early this year."
Ramadi shopkeepers were seen shuttering their stores today, apparently in fear of more clashes.
"We were told by the opposition [insurgents] to close our shops and leave the area because there would be fighting in the market," said Mohammed Medhat, owner of a grocery store in Ramadi's central market area. "I'm a father. I need to earn money to feed my children. We can't keep living with this fighting."
There were no immediate reports of U.S. deaths today. On Wednesday, the death toll of American troops in Iraq since the war started in 2003 reached 900 after a roadside bomb north of Baghdad killed one U.S. 1st Infantry Division soldier.