At 9:15 a.m. Tuesday a bomb hidden in a minibus leaving a bus stop on a main road in Mahmoudiya exploded, wounding three Iraqi passengers, police said.

Al-Qaida has been active for years in the string of towns and villages in the area south of the capital. The mostly Sunni region is known as the "triangle of death" because of frequent attacks on US and Iraqi forces as well as Shiite civilians traveling to shrine cities in the south.

During the search Monday, US and Iraqi forces exchanged fire with gunmen near the town of Youssifiyah, killing two and injuring four, an Iraqi army officer said.

On Tuesday, an Iraqi interpreter working with the US soldiers said the coalition's search was focusing on rural areas outside Mahmoudiya and that life was proceeding as normal in the city.

But he also said Iraqi civilians being stopped for questioning by US forces appeared nervous that they could be attacked by insurgents later, if they were seen cooperating with the coalition. The interpreter spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for his own security.

The area around illage of Parwanah al-Saghirah about 90 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad early Tuesday, killing five people and wounding 14, Iraqi army and police officers said.

Locals guarding the area on the outside of the village fought back for about an hour, and an undetermined number of insurgents were killed or wounded, the officers said.

In other violence or operations Tuesday:

_Unidentified gunmen killed Iraqi army Col. Raed Ahmed Shihab in Baghdad as he drove in the city, police said. He had worked for the Iraqi ministry of defense.

_The US-led coalition detained 10 suspected insurgents during raids targeting al-Qaida in Iraq and another hard-line militant Sunni group, the Ansar al-Sunna Army, in the cities of Mosul, Fallujah and an area near the US Air Force base of Taji, north of the capital, the military said.

_A roadside bomb apparently hit a US convoy in the Kamaliya area of southeastern Baghdad. Associated Press TV video showed one of the convoy's trucks burning and two US Black Hawk helicopters circling overhead. Later, when the fire went out, Iraq men and young boys were shown on the footage looting what remained of the truck.

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