More Insurgents Detained in U.S.-Iraqi Raids

American and Iraqi troops pushing through a desolate area of Iraq’s Sunni heartland rounded up dozens more suspected insurgents, including alleged killers of a television journalist, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Saturday.

The third day of the sweep through villages near Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, stirred growing unease among leading Sunni Arabs. One called it a needless “escalation” at a time of difficult negotiations over forming a broad-based government.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, a dozen more bodies were found as a shadowy war of Shiite-Sunni reprisals apparently continued. And Shiite Muslims heading to the holy city of Karbala came under attack, with a roadside bomb killing one and wounding five.

Elsewhere, an oil tanker driver was shot dead 50 miles southeast of Baghdad, and a tribal sheik was slain 30 miles west of the capital.

In a radio address the day before the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, President Bush said the violence in Iraq “has created a new sense of urgency” among Iraqi leaders to form a government.

Those leaders -- representatives of the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs in Iraq’s new parliament -- were taking a break from negotiations to observe Monday’s Shiite holiday and Tuesday’s Kurdish New Year.

They are deadlocked over how to apportion the most powerful jobs in the new government, as minority blocs seek to limit domination by Shiite Muslims.

In the counterinsurgency sweep through a 100-square-mile area of semidesert northeast of the Tigris River town of Samarra, Iraqi soldiers and units of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division had detained about 80 suspected insurgents as of Saturday, said Lt. Col. Edward S. Loomis, a U.S. spokesman. Seventeen were released after questioning, he said.

Among those detained were six people, not further identified, allegedly responsible for the March 11 killing of Amjad Hameed, director of the Iraqi television station Al Iraqiya, and his driver, Iraqi officials said.

In other action, Iraqi counterinsurgency troops staged a predawn raid near Baqubah, about 30 miles north of Baghdad, touching off a clash in which two gunmen were killed, one was wounded and 18 were arrested, Brig. Saman Talabani said.

Besides ammunition and weapons, the soldiers seized computer discs of fatwas, or religious edicts, calling for the killing of Iraqi police and soldiers, he said.

At least 2,300 American military personnel have died since the Iraq war began.