U.S. says captors of three soldiers in Iraq isolated

By Paul Tait and Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces searching for three soldiers said on Tuesday suspected al Qaeda militants holding the men were trapped in an area of farmland near Baghdad.

Backed by helicopters and using sniffing dogs, thousands of American and Iraqi troops taking part in the massive hunt have isolated towns in the "Triangle of Death" south of the capital, where the captors are believed to be hiding, the military said.

Al Qaeda has warned the U.S. military that the hunt could put the captured soldiers' lives at risk.

"The captors don't have freedom of movement; if they have the soldiers, they can't move them from where they are," said Major Kenny Mintz, an officer participating in the operation. "We're doing a deliberate search of the areas for the people responsible for the soldiers we're looking for."

"Right now our focus is on searching for the missing soldiers, and we're trying to isolate the areas where we think they could be," Mintz was quoted as saying in the statement.

The soldiers, part of a larger unit sent to intercept roadside bombs in a Sunni Arab militant stronghold, went missing after a coordinated ambush on Saturday in which four other U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi army translator were killed.

The hunt in a terrain of orchards and canals centred near the town of Mahmudiya, where suspected al Qaeda militants abducted two U.S. soldiers in June. Their badly mutilated bodies were found days later.

The U.S. military said it had detained 11 people and conducted "tactical questionings" since the search began.