Forces capture would-be bomber in Iraq

Iraqi and U.S. forces captured a suicide bomber before he could detonate his explosive belt Thursday, and announced a key suspect in the kidnap-slaying of Egypt's top envoy to Iraq had been arrested in what was hailed as a blow to the terror network.

The thwarted suicide attack - just 150 feet from the Green Zone, the site of the U.S. Embassy and major Iraqi government offices - was intended to be part of coordinated assaults by a suicide car bomber and two pedestrians strapped with explosives.

The attackers apparently planned to detonate the car bomb first. Then the two pedestrians would blow themselves up in the midst of troops, police and rescue workers rushing to the scene, U.S. officials said.

The car bomb exploded successfully. But one pedestrian bomber was killed after an Iraqi policeman shot him, setting off his explosive vest, a U.S. statement said.

The second pedestrian bomber was wounded by shrapnel from the blast before he could detonate his own vest, and was in critical condition at a U.S. military hospital in the Green Zone, the statement said.

Would-be bombers are rarely captured in Iraq. A 19-year-old Saudi was taken into custody after he somehow survived the explosion of his fuel tanker in December, a blast that nine people. A Yemeni was arrested in 2003 when his car bomb failed to detonate at a Baghdad police station.

There was no word on the identity of the failed bomber, but his arrest could yield valuable intelligence on the shadowy network of Islamic extremists - many of them believed to be foreigners linked to al-Qaida.

In another setback to insurgents, about 30 suspected al-Qaida members were arrested in the past week, including a key suspect in this month's killing of Egyptian envoy Ihab al-Sherif and attacks on senior diplomats from Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. command said.