23 killed in Iraq violence

Suspected al-Qaeda fighters clashed with police and members of a rival militant group on Thursday after an attack on the homes of tribal sheikhs that left 23 people dead and another 15 kidnapped.
Brigadier General Ali Dilayan, chief of police in Baquba, capital of the restive province of Diyala, told AFP that 200 fighters from al-Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate attacked the small town of Kanan at dawn.
"The first attack was against a mosque," he told AFP. "They blew up the mosque, then they bombed houses crowded with family members."
Three houses were attacked, including those of two sheikhs who support Iraqi police and US troops in their fight against al-Qaeda, he said.
Police counterattacked with the support of gunmen from the Brigades of the 1920 Revolution, a Sunni insurgent group which was once allied to al-Qaeda but which has become one of its fiercest rivals.
In one house, Sheikh Yunis al-Tae and an unknown number of his sons were killed, Dilayan said, adding that 17 people were wounded.
Among those killed were 22 civilians and a police officer and Dilayan warned that the toll could rise as emergency workers dig through the rubble.
"We have arrested 22 al-Qaeda suspects," he said, adding that they were detained south of Kanan, 50km from Baghdad, in an area known to be a stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The US military blames the militant group for much of the violence besetting Iraq. In recent months al-Qaeda has begun attacking the increasing number of Sunni Arab tribesmen who support US-led forces in fighting the militants.
Meanwhile, an explosion rocked Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone on Thursday but there were no casualties, an official at the US embassy said.
The Green Zone, a walled-in city district, houses the Iraqi parliament and several other foreign embassies including the British mission, aside from the US embassy.
The zone comes under regular attack from insurgents and militias who fire rockets and mortars at the highly secured area in central Baghdad.
In other violence a roadside bomb killed one civilian in Baghdad's Jadida neighbourhood, security officials said.
The US military also said one of its soldiers was killed and four wounded in a roadside bomb explosion on Wednesday west of Baghdad.
The latest fatality took the military's losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,721, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
The military also said two suicide car bombers attacked a US-led forces outpost in northern Baghdad on Wednesday, killing four Iraqi soldiers and wounding 11 American troops and four Iraqi soldiers.
The exact location of the outpost was not revealed.
The attack took place on Wednesday at the outpost manned by US soldiers from 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division and Iraqi soldiers from 3rd Brigade, 9th Iraqi Army Division.
The military said four Iraqi soldiers were also wounded in the twin suicide bomb assault.
The exact location of the outpost was not revealed by the military.
On Wednesday, 14 American soldiers died when their Blackhawk helicopter crashed before dawn in northern Iraq. The accident was one of the worst suffered by the military in more than four years of conflict in Iraq.