This from 1010 Wins:

BAGHDAD  — A sailor from Brooklyn has died in Iraq, the Defense Department said Saturday.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Joseph D. Alomar, 22, died in a “non-combat
related incident” on Jan. 17, while serving at Camp Bucca, a U.S.-run
detention center in southern Iraq, the military said. Alomar was
assigned to a military police unit.

In a brief statement, defense officials said Alomar’s death was
“not the result of hostile action, but occurred in a hostile fire
zone.” They did not elaborate. The death is under investigation, the
statement said.

Meanwhile, a U.S. helicopter crashed Saturday northeast of Baghdad, killing all 13 people on board, the military said.

The military did not give a cause for the crash, saying only that
the incident was under investigation. But the brief statement lacked
the customary comment that the aircraft was not shot down, indicating
it may have come under fire by insurgents. The helicopter was carrying
13 passengers and crew members and all were killed, it said.

No further details were released, including the exact location of the crash.

The violent Diyala province sits northeast of Baghdad, and U.S. and
Iraqi forces have been battling Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia
forces around its main city of Baqouba for months.

Separately, the military also announced the deaths of two American soldiers and a Marine.

One soldier was killed Saturday in a roadside bombing in northern
Baghdad. Another was killed Friday by a roadside bomb in the northwest
province of Ninevah, while a Marine was killed Friday in fighting in
Anbar, the military said.

The crash underscored a major danger in Iraq as the military relies
heavily on air travel to transport troops and ferry officials to avoid
the dangers of roadside bombs.

The worst U.S. aircraft accident since the war began was on Jan. 26,
2005, when a Marine transport helicopter crashed during sandstorms in
Iraq’s western desert, killing 30 Marines and a U.S. sailor.

The deaths came as U.S. and Iraqi forces prepared for a major security operation to pacify the capital.

U.S. helicopters dropped off elite Iraqi police forces staging a
raid Saturday against an al-Qaida-linked Sunni militant group in
Baghdad, killing 15 insurgents and capturing five, the Interior
Ministry said.

Members of the militant group were hiding in two abandoned houses in
a Sunni stronghold in southern Baghdad, and resisted the assault by the
Iraqi forces, who were backed by gunfire from the helicopters, ministry
spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.

Those killed and captured were believed to be part of the militant
group known as the Omar Brigade, which Khalaf said was behind a series
of kidnappings and killings of Shiites in the neighborhood.

“We were provided with helicopter support by our friends in the
multinational forces and we did not suffer any casualties,” Khalaf
said.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, Iraqi police and hospital officials said a
joint U.S.-Iraqi force searched a hospital for an unspecified target in
the volatile Sunni-dominated western neighborhood of Yarmouk.

The Americans confiscated weapons and ID cards from the police and
guards at the hospital after a confrontation with a guard demanding
they leave their weapons at the door, Khalaf said.

“We resolved the matter within minutes and the Americans gave the
Iraqi policemen their weapons and IDs cards back and now everything is
OK,” he said.

Dr. Haqi Ismail, the hospital’s manager, said the raid occurred at 4:30 a.m.

“They were looking for someone, they searched all the rooms and the emergency unit,” he said.

The U.S. military did not respond to request for comment on either raid.

U.S. and Iraqi forces are gearing up for a joint security operation
aimed at ending attacks between Shiites and Sunnis that have been
spiraling since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra.

President Bush has committed an additional 21,500 American soldiers
for the drive and U.S. commanders have been promised a freer hand
against both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen.

The top American commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said Friday
that he thought some of the extra troops for Baghdad might return home
after a few months.

The deaths highlighted a major danger for U.S. forces in Iraq, where
the military relies heavily on air travel to avoid the dangers of
roadside bombs.

“I think it’s probably going to be the summer, late summer, before
you get to the point where people in Baghdad feel safe in their
neighborhoods,” Casey said.

On Friday, U.S. and Iraqi forces swooped into a mosque complex in
eastern Baghdad before dawn and detained Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji. The
office of Muqtada al-Sadr said al-Darraji was media director for the
cleric’s political movement and demanded his immediate release.

The U.S. military, in a statement that did not name al-Darraji, said
special Iraqi army forces operating with U.S. advisers had “captured a
high-level, illegal armed group leader” in Baghdad’s Baladiyat
neighborhood, which is adjacent to Sadr City, the stronghold of
al-Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army. It said two other suspects were also
detained.

Nassar al-Rubaie, the head of al-Sadr’s bloc in parliament, accused
U.S. forces of trying to provoke the Sadrists into violence ahead of
the security operation.

He said al-Darraji “is a peaceful man and what was mentioned in the
American release is lies and justification for the aggression against
al-Sadr’s movement.”

An adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki complained there
was no coordination with the political leadership in the arrest.