Iraqi security forces have arrested 75 suspected insurgents in recent days during an operation centred on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, according to a government statement Saturday. Nearly three dozen of the arrests were made Friday in Mosul, said the statement from the office of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. The city has been the site of repeated insurgent attacks. In Tikrit, two Iraqis died while constructing homemade bombs, said city police. Elsewhere in the city, insurgents fired several mortar rounds in the Mutasim district, wounding seven civilians. Two deaths occurred near Baghdad, both civilians, after a car bomb exploded near U.S. tanks on a highway west of the capital, witnesses said. South of Baghdad, police said three family members died in an automobile crash involving U.S. troops. The Iraqi driver was attempting to pass a military convoy when soldiers opened fire on his vehicle, causing the driver to lose control on the road. The U.S. military said one of its soldiers was killed in al-Anbar province, west of the capital, on Friday.
