S Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Iraqi troops had displayed leadership in the Mosul operation and the Al Qaeda network was close to being completely defeated.

Iraqi police detained 400 people during search operations in two Shi'ite neighbourhoods of southwest Baghdad and also seized weapons.

Legislators loyal to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada Al Sadr yesterday denounced the Iraqi government, accusing it of trying to crush the movement and warning of "black clouds" on the horizon for truces that have eased fighting between Al Sadr's militia and security forces.

Elsewhere, three people were killed and four wounded when a minibus was attacked with a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Separately, medics in Iraqi Kurdistan yesterday said that they had seen a surge in violence against women in May, with both so-called "honour" killings and female suicides on the increase.

Fourteen women died in the first 10 days of May alone, a doctor said in the region's second largest city of Sulaimaniyah. Seven of them took their own lives, the other seven were murdered.

Meanwhile, an internal audit in the US has shown that the Pentagon cannot account for $15 billion (BD5.7bn) in payments for goods and services in Iraq, something which members of Congress blasted as a "shocking" accountability failure.

An Iraqi baby boy was found alive yesterday inside the cloak of either his mother or aunt after both women were shot dead execution style in Alton Kobri, outside Kirkuk.

The two sisters had been abducted hours earlier following a dispute between two neighbouring families and were shot in the head.