Sunni Arab politicians have complained that raids by the Shi'ite-led Interior Ministry have inflamed sectarian tensions as politicians seek to form a new government that will include all communities and calm the Sunni-led insurgency.
Shi'ite officials counter that Sunni militants have killed many police and soldiers.
The US command said yesterday that an American soldier was killed Thursday evening in a roadside bombing north of the capital. It was the sixth American military fatality this month and brought to 2,248 the number of US service members to have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
A British soldier was killed Thursday in a traffic accident in southern Iraq.
Thousands of Iraqis protested publication of caricatures of Islam's Prophet Mohammed. The caricatures, first published in Denmark and printed elsewhere in a demonstration of press freedom, have enraged many Muslims and prompted calls to boycott products from Denmark and other countries whose media reprint the pictures.
However, Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric suggested that Islamic extremists responsible for suicide attacks and terrorism were partly responsible for tarnishing the image of Islam.
''We strongly denounce and condemn" the caricatures, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said in a statement on his website. But he also referred to ''misguided and oppressive" elements within the Muslim community whose actions ''projected a distorted and dark image of the faith of justice, love, and brotherhood."
Also yesterday, German officials appealed to the kidnappers of two German engineers to free the pair or make contact to begin negotiations.
In a tape aired Tuesday by Al-Jazeera television, the kidnappers threatened to kill the captives unless Germany cut off all links to Iraq within 72 hours.
