Iran's foreign minister made a historic trip to Baghdad, pledging to secure his country's borders to stop militants from entering Iraq and saying the "situation would have been much worse" if Tehran were actually supporting the insurgency as the US has claimed.
Iranian envoy Kamal Kharrazi's trip on Tuesday was the highest-level visit by an official from any of Iraq's six neighboring countries since former president Saddam Hussein's ouster two years ago.
Kharrazi, who held talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on a day of deepening sectarian violence, vowed that his country was committed to supporting Iraq's political and economic reconstruction and would do all it could to improve security conditions.
"We believe securing the borders between the two countries means security to the Islamic Republic of Iran," Kharrazi said.
Zebari said militants had infiltrated Iraq from Iran, "but we are not saying that they are approved by the Iranian government."
Incoming British Defense Secretary John Reid also visited Iraq on Tuesday, traveling to Baghdad and Basra on his first foreign trip. The stream of visitors is aimed at shoring up the new Iraqi leadership caught in a surge of violence that has killed more than 470 people since the government was announced on April 28.
Al-Jaafari led anti-Saddam militiamen based in Iran during part of his two-decade exile. He has said Iraq now wants positive relations with Iran.
The Iranian envoy's visit comes at a time of spiraling violence fueled by foreign extremists and rival groups of Sunnis and Shiites.
US troops backed by helicopters battled scores of insurgents holed up in two houses in Mosul, 360km northwest of Baghdad. Mosul police commander Lieutenant General Ahmad Mohammed Khalaf claimed 20 militants were killed when US aircraft destroyed the buildings, but the US military said it was unaware of any casualties.
Mortar attacks by insurgents in northern Mosul yesterday killed two Iraqis and injured eight others, including seven schoolchildren, police and hospital officials said.
A car bomb also detonated in Baquba, 60km northeast of Baghdad, injuring 14 people -- including 12 police officers. The car, parked in central Baquba, blew up as a three-car police convoy drove by, damaging all the vehicles, police Colonel Mudhafar Muhammed said.
Three Islamic clerics -- a Shiite and two Sunnis -- were shot and killed in Baghdad, police said on Tuesday, a day after Iraq's prime minister vowed to use an "iron fist" to end sectarian violence.
Another 17 Iraqis were killed on Tuesday: two Iraqi officials in separate Baghdad drive-by shootings, six truck drivers delivering supplies to US forces north of the capital, a former member of Saddam's Baath Party and his three grown sons, three Mosul police officers and two soldiers in Baghdad.
A US soldier was killed and a second was wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol near Tikrit, 130km north of Baghdad, the military said. At least 1,622 US military members have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003.
A militant group posted a video on the Internet on Tuesday showing the slaying of two men said to be Iraqis who worked on US bases. Before they died one warned Arabs not to cooperate with the Americans.
The video's authenticity could not be independently verified. The video and statement did not say when the men were abducted and when the killings took place.
Shiite cleric Sheik Mouwaffaq al-Husseini was killed in a Tuesday drive-by shooting by unknown gunmen in Baghdad's western Jihad neighborhood, police Captain Taleb Thamer said.
A senior police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday that two more Sunni clerics had been shot and their bodies found in Baghdad within a 24-hour period.
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