By LEE KEATH
BAGHDAD (AP) - Sunni extremists attacked an isolated village northwest of Baghdad in a fierce battle with residents that reportedly left dozens dead, the deputy governor of Iraq's Diyala province said Tuesday.
Residents of the village of Sherween called Deputy Gov. Auf Rahim appealing for help, saying there were no Iraqi police or army units nearby to protect them, according to an Associated Press reporter who was in Rahim's office in the city of Baqouba when he received the call.
Rahim said he was told in the call that the attackers were believed to belong to al-Qaida and that the fighting the was still going on but the insurgents appeared to have control over the village. It was not clear how many extremists were involved.
Rahim said the villagers reported that 25 extremists and 18 local residents were killed in the battles and 40 people wounded. The casualty figures could not be independently confirmed.
A resident of the town of Dali Abbas, neighboring Sherween, told AP "the area has come under attack since yesterday, and the people of the village are the only ones defending it." He spoke on condition his name not be used for fear of reprisals.
An Iraqi army officer in the Mansouria region close to Sherween confirmed that insurgents appeared to be in control of the village. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Sherween—a village of about 7,000 people, about equally divided between Shiites and Sunnis—lies about 35 miles northwest of Baqouba, where U.S. troops have been fighting a three-week-old offensive to uproot Sunni extremists who use the area to launch attacks in nearby Baghdad.
U.S. commanders say they are making progress in clearing Baqouba, but acknowledge that many militants—including leaders of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq—fled the city before the assault began in mid-June. After three years of U.S. training, however, the Iraqi army remains incapable of operating on its own, U.S. officials say.
Fleeing insurgents are believed to have headed north to carry out strikes in unprotected areas. On Friday, a suicide bomber hit a Shiite Kurdish village, Zargoush, near Sharween, that killed 22 people.
The next morning, a suicide truck bomber hit the Shiite Turkoman town of Armili, west of the region, killing at least 160 people. The attack raised an outcry that Iraqi security forces were not doing enough to protect vulnerable areas—and calls that residents be given arms.
U.S. and British forces also targeted Shiite militants accused in attacks on coalition troops and sectarian killings.
The British military said Tuesday warplanes struck the day before in the southern town of al-Majar al-Kabir near the Iranian border, killing three militants suspected of smuggling weapons into Iraq. Iraqi police officials said a British helicopter strike killed the brother and two guards of radical Shiite cleric Sheik Abu Jamal al- Fartousi, whom the British military accused of being a leader in Iran's elite Quds Force suspected of arming militants.
The U.S. military said American special operations forces in a raid Sunday captured 12 militants in Baghdad who had broken away from the Mahdi Army, the militia of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and had carried out attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops
AP correspondents Anne Flaherty and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.