Four Dead in Car Blast in Northern Iraq as Bomb Kills Three US Soldiers Three US soldiers were killed north of Baghdad as a car blast killed four people in the city of Arbil. The three US troops died in a roadside bombing near Samarra, north of Baghdad on Wednesday, a US military spokesman said. Their vehicle was hit by a homemade bomb of the sort favoured by anti-US resistance fighters at around 9:00 am, the spokesman said Wednesday. Four people, including a bomber, were killed and another 15 wounded when a pick-up truck packed with explosives blew up outside interior ministry offices in Arbil around 11:50 am, the ministry said. Two policeman and a civilian were among the dead. Ministry employees were among the wounded. Explosions and automatic weapons fire jolted southern Baghdad early Wednesday as the US army conducted sweeps for fighters. During the raids conducted all over Baghdad, fierce firefights erupted where US troops called in fixed-wing aircraft to battle the fighters, the officer said. Meanwhile, US troops searched Mosul, still home to many 'Baath' supporters, for clues to the whereabouts of Saddam's top henchman Izzat Ibrahim. Soldiers arrested a childhood friend of Ibrahim, considered one of the masterminds of the deadly anti-US insurgency, relatives and an Iraqi security force member said. The aide of Ibrahim, identified as Sheikh Ghazi Hanash, head of the influential Tayy tribe, was detained at his Mosul home along with three of his sons, said Hanash's relatives and Waadallah Tewfik Hassan, an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps member who participated in the raid. A firefight ensued that left one of the sheikh's bodyguards dead and his daughter wounded. Ibrahim, Saddam's number two in the Baath party, is suspected of forging an alliance with Islamic extremists in battling the eight-month-old US-led occupation and has a 10-million-dollar price on his head. The 101st Airborne Division in Mosul had no immediate information on the arrest but said it had detained some Iraqis on Tuesday. An Iraqi security force member was also killed in action, but the 101st Airborne said it had no further details. Also Tuesday, one Iraqi was killed and three others wounded when a minibus and a vehicle were hit with an explosion in the Daudi neighbourhood, west of Baghdad, an Iraqi policeman said. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Iraqi police officers inspect a minibus damaged in a blast after a roadside explosive device went off killing two and wounding two people in central Baghdad Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2003.( AP Photo/ Samir Mizban)