BAGHDAD, Aug 12: Iraqi guerillas killed 13 civilians and six members of the US and Iraqi security forces in attacks around the country on Saturday, as a joint anti-terror operation began to bite in Baghdad.

The US-led troops captured 60 suspected members of a car bomb cell after swooping on a funeral near an area where a 5,000-strong US-Iraqi joint force is conducting a major house-to-house sweep to eliminate ‘death squads’.

But the forces did not have everything their way. Two US soldiers and three of their Iraqi comrades were killed in two roadside bomb attacks in the capital, Iraqi and US military officials said.

A car bomb in the south of the city also killed five civilians and injured 10 more.

The US-led forces said those captured were thought to be linked to the Al Qaeda in Iraq.

They were ‘detained without incident’ on Friday after intelligence data led troops to a funeral in Arab Jabur, on the southern edge of Baghdad.

The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki confirmed the arrests, saying the alleged Al-Qaeda cell ‘specialised in manufacturing explosives and car bombs’ and was plotting the large-scale slaughter of civilians.

Arab Jabur is a Sunni area close to the restive Dura district, which was this week the focus of a massive joint Iraqi-US operation designed to cordon off flashpoint areas, conduct weapons searches and root out armed gangs.

The US forces also announced that soldiers and marines in the restive town of Ramadi had come under attack from guerillas firing rocket launchers and machine guns but had returned fire and killed 26 enemies without loss.

The defence ministry said its forces had arrested another 12 ‘terrorists’ and detained 80 more suspects, most of them in Basra, over the previous 24 hours.

‘Operation Forward Together’ has put more than 50,000 Iraqi troops and police and more than 10,000 Americans into the fray in a bid to quell sectarian violence, which on average kills around 50 people every day.

Last week US generals said the violence could push Iraq into civil war.—AFP