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BAGHDAD, July 22 (AFP): Twenty-five insurgents were killed in a fierce battle Wednesday with US troops in the Iraqi flashpoint city of Ramadi that also left 14 US servicemen injured, the US military said Thursday.
The clashes were triggered when insurgents set off a bomb near a Marines convoy and then attacked it with rocket propelled grenades and gunfire, according to a military statement.
It said the US forces, backed by air support, battled against an estimated 75 to 100 insurgents and detained 25 of them, as well as discovering two bombs, including a car bomb.
Police and hospital sources in Ramadi, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad, had said Wednesday that four people, including three brothers, were killed and 14 wounded in the violence, which they said included a car bomb.
An Iraqi police officer said the three brothers were killed when the car bomb exploded in their path as they walked along a main road lined with several public buildings.
Meanwhile, a boy street cleaner was blown to pieces Thursday when he accidentally triggered a bomb left on the roadside near a mosque in Baghdad, police said.
The boy, aged between 10 and 12, had been clearing the street when he happened upon the device that exploded, tearing a hole about three-feet (one metre) wide in the road and damaging a nearby car, police said.
The bloody remains of the victim, including pieces of finger and hand, lay scattered around the crater near the Abu Hanifa mosque.
US and Iraqi forces are frequently targeted by roadside bombs as part of a 15-month insurgency that bred during the US-led occupation.
Another report adds: Seven foreign truck drivers are being held in Iraq by a group calling itself the "Black Flags", according to photographs and a video made available to AFP.
The seven were said to be three Kenyans, three Indians and an Egyptian, according to the video, which could not be authenticated.
Arab satellite television network Al-Arabiya Wednesday broadcast a video by the same group showing six hostages who they threatened to kill if their Kuwaiti employer did not withdraw from Iraq.
Meanwhile a report from:Manila adds: A poor truck driver came home to a hero's welcome Thursday as the Philippines briefly put aside the controversy over the government's concession to insurgents in Iraq who had threatened to behead him.
Angelo dela Cruz's arrival took on the trappings of a royal visit, with live television coverage and streamers reading "Welcome home, Angelo" stretched along Manila's main boulevard.
Dozens of foreign and local journalists waited in a roped-off area of the international airline terminal. Airport general manager Edgardo Manda called it "one of the biggest arrivals for any celebrity" in recent years.
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