More than 20 foreign insurgents, some wearing suicide vests, were killed by American and Iraqi forces during raids in an area militants were using to stage attacks in Baghdad, the US military said Sunday.

Senior Iraqi officers meet with Iraqi troops after two days of fighting Saturday April 29, 2006 at a camp near Baqouba 60 km (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq. In simultaneous attacks by insurgents on police stations and checkpoints, at least 58 people were killed and 74 arrested in two days of clashes, including 49 insurgents, seven Iraqi soldiers and two civilians, Iraqi and U.S. officials said. [AP]

The raids have taken place in and around Youssifiyah, a town about 12 miles south of Baghdad, where an American helicopter apparently was shot down by insurgents nearly a month ago, killing the two soldiers aboard.

In the latest operations Saturday, US and Iraqi forces attacked areas being used by foreign insurgent groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq, and captured seven militants and detained more than 50 suspected ones, the US command said.

Such operations have killed more than 20 foreign insurgents in the last few weeks, several of them caught wearing suicide vests, the military said. That included 12 insurgents, at least five of them foreign, who were killed in Youssifiyah on Tuesday when US troops backed by a helicopter and jets struck a suspected safe house there, the US military said.

It said insurgents have been using the Youssifiyah region as a staging area to conduct suicide attacks in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

When the Apache helicopter crashed on April 1, the US command said it was believed to have been shot down, and the Mujahedeen Shura Council, purportedly a new umbrella organization that includes al-Qaida in Iraq and smaller insurgent groups, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Al-Jazeera television also aired footage provided by the insurgents which they claimed showed parts of the wreckage.

The US military did not say whether the suspected militants killed in the latest raids in and around Youssifiyah were believed to have been involved in the helicopter crash. The area is part of the infamous "triangle of death" and the scene of numerous ambushes against US and Iraqi troops, foreigners and Shiite civilians.

A roadside bomb killed a US soldier southwest of Baghdad on Saturday, raising the American death toll for April to at least 70 service members, the highest monthly figure since November, when 84 Americans died. But the U.S. military would not give the precise location of Saturday's attack, or say whether it was related to the coalition raids in and around Youssifiyah.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad and another Iraqi city, three roadside bombs targeting U.S. or Iraqi forces exploded on Sunday.

One hit an American convoy in central Tikrit, the hometown of former President Saddam Hussein, said police Maj. Ahmed Awad said. He said the blast set a Humvee on fire, causing US casualties, but the U.S. command could not immediately confirm that.

Two roadside bombs targeting Iraqi police patrols exploded within a half hour of each other in two separate areas of western Baghdad, wounding two police officers and the driver of a municipal vehicle traveling nearby, police said.