BAGHDAD, 19 March 2007 — Iraqi security forces seized a cache of weapons, including a sniper rifle, and arrested seven suspects in a raid on the house of a leading Sunni parliamentarian, officials said yesterday.

Brig. Gen. Qassim Mussawi, spokesman for Iraqi forces in Baghdad, also said that four cars taken from Dhafer Al-Ani’s house had been tested by “non-Iraqi experts” and found to contain traces of explosives.

Ani is a former spokesman for Iraq’s biggest Sunni movement, the Islamic Party, which is part of the government of national unity. It was not clear whether Ani was in his west Baghdad home on March 8, when the raid took place, and he was not reported among those detained.

Mussawi said the forces found “65 Kalashnikov assault rifles and other weapons and seized four vehicles. “We have dealt transparently with the detainees and released six of them, because we do not have enough evidence against them,” he added.

Mussawi said the vehicles were impounded at the Office of Criminal Evidence and had tested positive for traces of the powerful explosive TNT.

Speaking at a separate news conference, Iraq government spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh, told reporters that the search proved that Iraqi officials would investigate anyone suspected of breaking the law, whatever their rank.

Iraqi forces also arrested an Iraqi-born Palestinian suspected of acting as a financier for the Al-Qaeda militant network, Mussawi said. He said Mahmud Hamed Kamal Al-Mathi — also known as “Abu Qutada the Palestinian” — was seized by commandos from the Iraqi Army’s 4th Brigade on Saturday in Bab Al-Moadham, a district of central Baghdad. In a video of the suspect’s interrogation shown to reporters, the 24-year-old bearded militant confirms his arrest and admits he received money from outside Iraq to fund insurgent attacks.

Insurgent attacks killed six more US troops, the military said yesterday, as security forces braced for more chemical attacks after dirty bombs left two policemen dead and 350 civilians sick.

Almost exactly four years after the invasion of Iraq, American casualties are still mounting as US and Iraqi forces battle to quell the insurgent and sectarian violence gripping the country.

In other violence in the Iraqi capital, a city steeped in Sunni-Shiite bloodletting, insurgents killed a policeman and two bystanders in separate incidents yesterday, security officials said. A US military statement said four troops died on Saturday when a roadside bomb ripped through a patrol in west Baghdad while another soldier was killed the same day when a foot patrol was hit by a bomb in the south.

A sixth soldier was killed and five were wounded, also Saturday, in a bomb blast in Diyala province, where attacks are on the rise as insurgents focus on areas beyond the reach of an intensive security operation under way in Baghdad. An Iraqi policeman and one civilian were killed and five policemen wounded when a roadside bomb struck a police patrol near the renowned Al-Mustansiriyah University in eastern Baghdad yesterday, security officials said.

Another civilian was killed and one was wounded in a mortar attack in central Baghdad’s Al-Fadhel district. Iraqi security forces are repeatedly targeted by insurgents opposed to the US-backed government, while Al-Mustansiriyah University has been hit several times, including by a female suicide bomber who killed 40 people in February.

Insurgents continue to carry out attacks in Baghdad despite the presence of 90,000 US and Iraqi troops on the streets, as part of Operation Fardh Al-Qanoon (Imposing Law) launched Feb. 14 to quell sectarian violence. US commanders say roadside bombs remain their biggest headache and have launched special operations to find car bomb factories hidden in the rural areas surrounding Baghdad. They also warn that insurgents have modified their tactics by adding gas bombs to their arsenal and striking soft targets in the belt of small towns around the capital that are outside the ambit of the security plan.