Bomb blasts have killed six US marines in western Iraq and US forces have killed more than 50 fighters in the latest offensive, according to the US military.
This week, the US military was waging three large offensives in western Iraq - Operations Iron Fist, River Gate and Mountaineers - in over six towns along the Euphrates river valley.
Before Iron Fist ended on Thursday, US warplanes dropped four bombs on an abandoned three-storey hotel seized by fighters in the town of Karabilah, near the Syrian border.
Twenty fighters were killed in the bombardment, the US military said on Friday. Seven more fighters were killed when planes destroyed three buildings and two were killed in fighting in Karabilah.
At least six fighters have been reported killed in Operation River Gate.
On Friday, three Iraqis were killed and another two wounded in an attack by armed men on the car in which they were travelling in Amiriya district, west of Baghdad, Aljazeera said quoting Iraqi police sources.
Meanwhile, British forces arrested 12 Iraqis in Basra in connection with recent attacks on British soldiers in the southern Iraqi city.
Aljazeera quoted local media as saying British soldiers stormed a funeral procession in the district of Maaqal in the centre of the city to make the arrests. Among those detained were the head of Basra's electricty distribution department and a police officer.
Separately, a group calling itself Jaish al-Mujahidin in Iraq has released a videotape saying it has downed a US drone. The videotape, whose authenticity could not be confirmed, showed parts of the drone, which was said to have been shot down over Ramadi, west of Baghdad, Aljazeera reported.
Eight days before Iraqis were to go to the polls to approve or reject the new constitution, officials across the country were still waiting to get copies of the document so they can distribute them to voters to read.
Distribution began in a few neighbourhoods of Baghdad, but did not appear to have begun elsewhere.
Al-Sadr loyalists held
The British raid in Basra targeted a house and netted 12 members of The Mahdi Army, the armed force loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, said British military spokesman Major Steven Melbourne.
In London, Britain's Ministry of Defence confirmed the raid.
On Thursday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said his government suspects that Iran and Lebanon's Hizbullah might be supplying technology and explosives to armed Shia Muslim groups operating in Iraq, but he provided no proof.
PHOTO CAPTION
Iraqis look at a car destroyed by a US military armored vehicle making its escape from a road side bomb attack in Ramadi, Iraq, Monday Sept. 26 2005. (AP)