BAGHDAD — Militants blew up three Sunni mosques south of Baghdad on Wednesday — apparently revenge strikes for a suicide truck bombing a day before that killed at least 87 people and badly damaged an important Shiite mosque in the capital.
U.S. forces expanded their push against insurgent strongholds outside Baghdad, meanwhile, as Iraqi units joined the offensive and took control of several districts in the key city of Baqouba, the military said.
The commander of U.S. ground forces, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, said the campaign seeks to uproot insurgents — including Sunni factions linked to al-Qaida — in areas north and east of Baghdad and allow Iraqi forces to take greater control over the four-month-old effort to restore control of the capital.
The offensive, launched Tuesday, "allows us to pressure" militants on the militant bases outside Baghdad, Odierno told CNN.
"More important, I'm hoping it will allow us to maintain it over a long period of time and continue to buy the time and space necessary for the Iraqi security forces to take over" in Baghdad, he said.
The U.S. military said at least 30 al-Qaida fighters were killed and several bombs and weapons caches destroyed as the soldiers fought their way through the streets of Baqouba.
The operation involves some 10,000 American soldiers in Diyala province, an al-Qaida bastion. It matched in size the force that American generals sent against the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in 2004. By late Tuesday, the military had reported only one American death, a Task Force Lightning soldier killed by an explosion near his vehicle.
Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said about 5,000 Iraqi soldiers and 2,000 paramilitary police were fighting. Iraqi forces said they took control of neighborhoods in Baqouba and were greeted by cheering people.
"Our goal is to have no safe havens in Iraq and of course the Iraqi security forces play a huge role in this and we're working very closely with them to make this happen," Odierno said.
The head of a Sunni insurgent group that has turned against al-Qaida and is cooperating with U.S. and Iraqi forces in the area said his fighters were participating in the operations and had succeeded in clearing several neighborhoods in eastern and western Baqouba.
The militant leader, who declined to be identified for fear of retribution, spoke as his fighters linked arms, chanted and danced while women ululated in celebration. An Associated Press reporter also saw residents in the Mustafa area in western Baqouba serving food to fighters who had battled al-Qaida and starting to repair their stores.
Wednesday's mosque bombings south of the capital caused no casualties, because no prayers were going on at the time.
Police said suspected Shiite militiamen detonated a bomb inside a Sunni mosque in Haswa, 30 miles south of Baghdad, at about 1 a.m. About six hours later, militants struck again at mosque near Hillah, about 60 miles south of the capital. A third Sunni mosque was attacked and damaged in an explosion in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad; the mosque was first attacked last week.
Police officials who reported the bombings spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
The attackers near Hillah also targeted the imam's house near the mosque, but the cleric fled when he saw them coming, according to the police.
Tuesday's suicide truck bombing against the Khulani mosque in central Baghdad was the deadliest single attack in Iraq since April 18, when at least 127 civilians were killed when a bomb detonated parked car at a mostly Shiite market in central Baghdad.
At a joint briefing with a U.S. military spokesman, Iraqi army spokesman Brig. Qassim al-Mousawi said the truck was carrying about 50 cooking gas cylinders and about 1,100 pounds of TNT.
Asked how the suicide bomber managed to drive his truck bomb through Baghdad and next to the mosque, al-Mousawi said that it was booby-trapped in the nearby industrial area of Sheik Omar. There were no checkpoints between there and the mosque, he said.
Authorities are planning to put security fences near the mosques.
Police initially said the bomb was hidden in a truck piled high with electric fans and air conditioners.
The U.S. military spokesman, Rear Adm. Mark Fox, acknowledged "an increasing pattern of attacks" against the Green Zone, a day after a mortar barrage against the heavily fortified area sent soldiers and contractors scrambling for cover.
Fox declined to provide details on the number of attacks against the Green Zone, which is also known as the International Zone, but said they were increasing.
"It's clear that there is an attempt to get lucky shots and there is unquestionably an increasing pattern of attacks here against the International Zone. There's no doubt about that," he said.
Battles also continued south of Baghdad between Iraqi security forces and Shiite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Four soldiers were killed and a Humvee was burned in nearly two hours of clashes in the Shiite town of Numaniyah, 75 miles southeast of Baghdad, police said. The fighting erupted hours after five other Iraqi soldiers were killed and three were wounded by a roadside bomb in the mainly Sunni town of Madain, on the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad.
Farther south, the U.S. military said three militants had been killed, including a senior leader of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and 45 detained after two days of clashes in Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. Iraqi police and hospital officials put the casualty toll at 35 killed and 150 wounded.
A British soldier died Wednesday after an attack on a military facility in the southern city of Basra, the British defense ministry said in London.
In all, 142 people were killed or found dead in sectarian violence Tuesday, a toll reflecting carnage associated with the months before the U.S. security crackdown in the capital began Feb. 14.
U.S. and Iraqi soldiers found 24 severely malnourished children in a Baghdad orphanage — some tied to their beds and too weak to stand, the U.S. military said Wednesday.
Labor and Social Affairs Minister Mahmoud Mohammed al-Radhi criticized publicity surrounding the boys and said news reports about the case were inaccurate.
"We totally reject the tricks they used to manipulate and distort facts and show the Americans as the humanitarian party. That could not be further from the truth," he said.
The minister said the institution in which the boys were housed had saved them from a certain death on the streets of Baghdad. All the boys, he said, were severely handicapped and abandoned by their families.
The U.S. military, which leaked the story and pictures of the orphanage to CBS News earlier this week, said they were all boys between the ages of 3 and 15. It said many of the youngsters were found naked in a dark room with no windows. Supplies of food and clothing were found in a nearby storeroom.
Associated Press writer Bushra Juhi in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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