by Ammar KarimThu Feb 8, 1:43 PM ET
US-backed Iraqi troops engaged in a major security sweep to break illegal militias' reign of terror in Baghdad and arrested the Iraq health ministry's second highest official.
Meanwhile, 55 people were killed in violence around the country.
The US military accused Hakim al-Zamili, the health ministy's deputy secretary, of providing millions of dollars to the capital's Shiite death squads.
"Special Iraqi Army Forces captured a senior ministry of health official today who is suspected of being a central figure in alleged corruption and rogue Jaysh Al-Mahdi infiltration of the ministry," a US statement said.
Jaysh Al-Mahdi (JAM) is the Arabic term for the Mahdi Army, a powerful militia group loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Iraqi Health Minister Ali al-Shamari reacted sharply to the arrest, saying: "This is a violation of the health ministry and of the sovereignty of Iraq."
According to the US statement, Zamili "is suspected in the deaths of several ministry officials" including its director general in the violent province of Diyala, and in kickback schemes linked to ministry contracts.
He is also accused of allowing a large number of Mahdi Army militiamen to work at the ministry and use its vehicles, including ambulances, to kidnap and kill Sunni Arabs.
In Iraq's government of national unity, the health ministry has been assigned to Sadr's party, which US authorities say backs death squads in the bitter sectarian violence gripping Iraq.
"The suspect's corruption is believed to have funnelled millions of US dollars into rogue JAM," the military said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi and US forces swept through Baghdad as part of a plan to quell the sectarian violence, but another 55 people were killed and scores wounded in a string of attacks in several parts of the country.
Forty-seven bodies were also discovered in Baghdad, northern Mosul and in Suweira, south of Baghdad.
US forces killed around 13 fighters in an air strike on a "senior foreign fighter facilitator" near the western Baghdad district of Ameriya, a US statement said.
The crackdown failed to halt the violence however, with security officials and medics reporting at least 20 people killed and 45 wounded by a car bomb in Al-Aziziya, 70 kilometres (45 miles) southeast of Baghdad Thursday.
Another car bomb in a predominantly Shiite district in eastern Baghdad killed 10 people and wounded another 10, while two soldiers were killed in an insurgent hand grenade attack and 20 bodies were found around the city.
Seven others died and 10 more were wounded in a hail of mortar fire that hit Iskandiriyah, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad.
The Al-Aziziya blast struck in the morning, while the market was packed, a security source said, and was the first such attack in the Shiite town.
Nine people, including four brothers, were killed by unidentified gunmen in Balad, north of the capital, police said.
Four US marines died Wednesday after being wounded in the western Al-Anbar province, a Sunni hotbed, the military said.
Their deaths brought the number of US military killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,103, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
The latest violence came as Iraqi and US troops spread across the capital in a long-awaited security offensive to curb bloodshed that has killed tens of thousands throughout the country in the past year.
On Wednesday, US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell said that implementation of the Baghdad stabilization plan was now fully under way.
Iraqi commander Lieutenant General Abboud Qanbar was in charge of the operation, eventually expected to involve some 80,000 Iraqi and US troops.
In Sadr City, the Shiite bastion in northeastern Baghdad, US Colonel Douglass Heckmann accompanied Iraqi General Abdullah Khanis al-Daffai to a meeting with 70 tribal chiefs at the local district council.
The sheikhs asked for help to ensure that Sunni Arabs forced out of the area are allowed to return safely to their homes and that Sunni mosques in the district are reopened.