Al-Zarqawi unlikely killed in Mosul gunfight, U.S. says

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. forces sealed off a house in the northern city of Mosul where eight suspected al-Qaida members died in a gunfight — some by their own hands to possibly avoid capture. The White House said Sunday that it was "highly unlikely" that the terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.

Insurgents, meanwhile, killed a U.S. soldier and two Marines in attacks over the weekend, and a British soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in the south.

On Saturday, police Brig. Gen. Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al-Qaida operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the house. Al-Zarqawi heads the group calling itself al-Qaida in Iraq.

During the gunbattle that followed, three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves, Iraqi officials said. Eleven Americans were wounded, the U.S. military said. Such intense resistance often suggests an attempt to defend a high-value target. But Trent Duffy, a Bush spokesman, said reports of al-Zarqawi's death were "highly unlikely and not credible."

U.S. soldiers controlled the site Sunday, and residents said helicopters circled throughout the day. Some residents said the security was reminiscent of the July 2003 operation in which Saddam Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai, were killed in Mosul.

The elusive al-Zarqawi has narrowly escaped capture. U.S. forces said they nearly caught him in a February raid that recovered his computer.

In May, the group said he was wounded in fighting and was taken out of the country for treatment. Within days, it reported he had returned, although there was never any independent confirmation that he was wounded.

The U.S. soldier killed Sunday near the capital was assigned to the Army's Task Force Baghdad and was hit by small-arms fire, the military said. The Marine, assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, died of wounds suffered the day before in Karmah.

In the southern city of Basra, a roadside bomb killed a British soldier and wounded four others, the British Ministry of Defense said. The ministry said 98 British soldiers have died in Iraq.

The U.S. military also said Sunday that 24 people — including another Marine and 15 civilians — were killed the day before in an ambush on a joint U.S. Iraqi patrol in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad in the volatile Euphrates River valley.

The three U.S. deaths brought to at least 2,094 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Meanwhile, four women were killed Sunday night when gunmen stormed their home in a Christian district of eastern Baghdad, police said, adding that valuables were stolen and the motive for the attack appeared to have been robbery.

The latest deaths occurred at the end of a three-day period in which at least 140 Iraqi civilians died in a series of bombings and suicide attacks — most targeting Shiite Muslims.

The victims included 76 people who died Friday in near-simultaneous suicide bombings at two Shiite mosques in Khanaqin and 36 more killed the next day by a suicide car bomber who detonated his vehicle amid mourners at a Shiite funeral north of the capital.

In Cairo, Egypt, Iraq's president said Sunday he was ready for talks with anti-government opposition figures and members of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party, and he called on the Sunni-led insurgency to join the political process.

But President Jalal Talabani, attending an Arab League-sponsored conference, insisted that the Iraqi government would not meet with Baath party members who are participating in the Sunni-led insurgency.

Talabani made clear in his remarks, however, that he would talk with insurgents and "criminals" only if they put down their weapons.

In Baghdad, hundreds of Sunnis demanded an end to the torture of detainees and called for the international community to pressure Iraqi and U.S. authorities to ensure that such abuse does not occur.

Anger over detainee abuse has increased sharply since U.S. troops found 173 detainees at an Interior Ministry prison in Baghdad's Jadriyah neighborhood. The detainees, mainly Sunnis, were found malnourished and some had torture marks on their bodies.

Iraq's Shiite-led government has promised to investigate.

Associated Press reporters Katherine Shrader, Sinbad Ahmed and Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.