(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-10-01 19:15

BAGHDAD - US and Iraqi forces killed more than 60 insurgent and militia fighters in intense battles over the weekend, officials said Sunday.

US soldiers guard a position during a joint operation with their Iraqi counterparts in Baquba. [Agencies]

The US Embassy, meanwhile, joined a broad swath of Iraqi politicians - both Shiite and Sunni - in criticizing a nonbinding US Senate resolution seen here as a recipe for splitting the country along sectarian and ethnic lines.

The US military also announced the death of an American soldier killed Saturday in a roadside bombing and gunfire attack in eastern Baghdad. There were 62 US military deaths in September, the lowest monthly toll since July 2006 when 43 American soldiers were killed, according to a preliminary Associated Press tally.

US aircraft killed more than 20 al-Qaida in Iraq fighters who opened fire on an American air patrol northwest of Baghdad, the US command said.

The firefight between US aircraft and the insurgent fighters occurred Saturday about 17 miles northwest of the capital, the military said.

The aircraft observed about 25 al-Qaida insurgents carrying AK-47 assault rifles - one brandishing a rocket-propelled grenade - walking into a palm grove, the military said.

"Shortly after spotting the men, the aircraft were fired upon by the insurgent fighters," it said.

The military did not say what kind of aircraft were involved but the fact that the fighters opened fire suggests they were low-flying Apache helicopters. The command said more than 20 of the group were killed and four vehicles were destroyed. No Iraqi civilians or US soldiers were hurt.

"Coalition forces have dealt significant blows to Al-Qaida Iraq in recent months, including the recent killing of the Tunisian head of the foreign fighter network in Iraq and the blows struck in the past 24 hours," military spokesman Col. Steven Boylan told The Associated Press.

Iraq's Defense Ministry said in an e-mail Sunday afternoon that Iraqi soldiers had killed 44 "terrorists" over the past 24 hours. The operations were centered in Salahuddin and Diyala provinces and around the city of Kirkuk, where the ministry said its soldiers had killed 40 and arrested eight. It said 52 fighters were arrested altogether.

The ministry did not further identify those killed, but use of the word "terrorists" normally indicates al-Qaida.

In a separate operation, US forces killed two insurgents and detained 21 others during weekend operations against al-Qaida.

Intelligence led to a raid early Sunday that netted what the US military called 15 rogue members of the Mahdi Army militia at an undisclosed Baghdad location.

The mainstream of the militia, the armed wing of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's organization, has been ordered by the religious leader to stop attacks on US and Iraqi forces.

But many one-time members of the group have split off and are acting independently of al-Sadr's control. Some have gone to Iran for training and are receiving weapons and financing from the Islamic regime in Tehran.