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Local officials, meanwhile, said four civilians, including a 3-year-old girl, were killed Tuesday during a raid by joint U.S.-Iraqi forces in Baghdad's Shiite district of Sadr City. The U.S. military said four militants were killed after a fierce gunfight, but it had no reports of civilian deaths.
Operation Lightning Hammer, which began late Monday with an air assault, was part of a broader U.S. push announced Monday to build on successes in Baghdad and surrounding areas by targeting al-Qaida in Iraq and Iranian-allied Shiite militia fighters nationwide.
Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, the commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said the troops were pursuing al-Qaida cells that had been disrupted and forced into hiding by previous operations.
"Our main goal with Lightning Hammer is to eliminate the terrorist organizations ... and show them that they truly have no safehaven
-- especially in Diyala," he said in a statement.
The military did not immediately provide results from the operation because it was in the beginning stages.
Spokesman Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly said the effort would not interrupt operations in Baqouba, where U.S. forces have flushed out al-Qaida and Shiite militiamen who had fomented a virtual civil war there.
"We are not drawing down in Baqouba at all, in fact, we are in the build and hold portion of the operation there," he said.
The military has claimed success in quelling the violence in the city, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, as well as in the capital, but it also acknowledges that Shiite and Sunni extremists fled to outlying areas where attacks have been increasing.
On Monday, three U.S. soldiers were killed in an explosion near their vehicle in the northwestern province of Ninevah, while another American soldier died during fighting in Baghdad, the military said in separate statements.
The sinking fortunes of al-Maliki and his Shiite-led administration have become something of a second front for Washington.
Al-Maliki appeared to have cleared the way, with a last-minute push from U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, for a crisis council that seeks to save his crumbling government, but the timing of the meeting was uncertain.
Al-Maliki's government -- a shaky coalition of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds
-- has been gutted by boycotts and defections. A full-scale disintegration could touch off power grabs on all sides and seriously complicate U.S.-led efforts to stabilize Iraq.
Al-Maliki has struggled over the past days to pull together a summit of Iraq's main religious and ethnic groups. The meeting finally appeared likely after Crocker called on Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, the lone Sunni Arab invited to the talks. Al-Hashemi's attendance had been in question.
A senior American official, who spoke in Baghdad, said Monday that the stage was set for major changes in the "structure, nature and direction of the Iraqi state." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the planned gathering.
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 But ending the political impasse would likely require concessions from al-Maliki's embattled government toward Sunnis, who account for up to 20 percent of Iraq's population but complain they have been sidelined in trying to rebuild Iraq after Saddam Hussein.
The importance of the Sunni role has taken on greater dimensions this year. Sunni tribal leaders, clerics and others have increasingly turned against the violence of al-Qaida in Iraq and helped bring significant U.S. military gains.
If al-Maliki were able to bring al-Hashemi on board -- which remained uncertain
-- he then could try to welcome back Sunni Cabinet ministers who quit earlier this month.
Should they refuse, al-Maliki has said he was ready to name rival Sunnis to the vacant Cabinet positions. He even mentioned reaching out to Sunni tribal sheiks in the western Anbar province, where the Sunni insurgency was born.
A police officer in Sadr City, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information, said the four civilians were killed and five others were wounded as American and Iraqi troops backed by helicopters, conducted house-to-house searches in the sprawling area in eastern Baghdad.
Associated Press photos showed the body of 3-year-old Zahraa Hussein lying in a wooden coffin, her white nightdress stained with blood. Police said she and her father had been struck by shrapnel while they slept on the roof of their house seeking comfort from the heat.
Spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said he had no reports of civilians killed in the operation.
"I can't confirm that our operation did that," he said, referring to Hussein's death. "We work very hard to avoid any injury to civilians."
The troops raided three buildings in search of a rogue Shiite militia leader suspected of coordinating and conducting attacks against U.S.-led forces and moderate Iraqis, the military said in a statement.
As the armored vehicles were leaving the area, they were attacked by two roadside bombs and small-arms fire from multiple locations, prompting helicopters to fire warning shots to allow the convoy to escape the attack, it said, adding that U.S.-led ground forces also returned fire, killing four gunmen.
[Associated Press; by Kim Gamel]
Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin and Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
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