BAGHDAD, June 19: Seven US troops were wounded in search operations for the two US soldiers who went missing south of Baghdad as an Al Qaeda-led group in Iraq claimed their abductions on Monday.

“Seven US service members have been wounded in action during these search operations since Friday night,” Major General William Caldwell, a spokesman for the US Army, said in a statement.

More than ‘8,000 US military, Iraqi army and police are working together, conducting an intensive search operation to determine the status of these soldiers’, Gen Caldwell said.

“We are using every means at our disposal.”

The soldiers went missing after they came under attack at a traffic control point near the predominantly Sunni town of Yusifiyah, south of Baghdad, on Friday. Another soldier died in the attack.

The agricultural area, criss-crossed by a maze of canals and lush fields, is a well-known guerilla stronghold.

A group of armed Sunni factions led by Al-Qaeda’s Iraq branch claimed responsibility for the abduction of the two soldiers in a statement posted on the Internet.

“Your brethren in the military wing of the Mujahedeen Shura Council abducted the two American soldiers near Yusifiyah,” the council, which groups eight factions, said in the statement.

The US military named the missing soldiers as Kristian Menchaca, 23, and Thomas L. Tucker, 25.

The claim followed the death of Al-Qaeda’s Iraq front man Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a US air raid on June 7 which the militant network vowed to avenge.

The Mujahedeen Shura Council said the abduction was but ‘the latest incident showing the weakness of the so-called US intelligence services and their confusion in Iraq’.

It also scoffed at ‘the army of the most powerful country in the world’ for returning empty-handed and ‘shamed’ after launching a search operation for the missing soldiers.

But the group did not explain the circumstances of the purported abduction, saying details would be released ‘in the coming days’.

Gen Caldwell said troops carried a series of operations during their search mission in the area.

“Three anti-Iraqi forces were killed in action, 34 detainees taken into custody, 63 tips received, to include 12 cordon and search operations based on actionable intelligence and eight air assault operations,” he said.—AFP