BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Militants detonated bombs in two Christian churches in the northern city of Mosul today, destroying the sanctuaries in the latest of a string of attacks seemingly aimed to stir religious and ethnic divisions here. No one was killed in the attacks, witnesses said. Advertisement

In another attack today, an American soldier was killed just before noon in Baghdad when his patrol came under small-arms fire, military officials said. Another soldier was wounded elsewhere in the city when his convoy struck a roadside bomb, officials said.

About 50 miles south of the capital, three Iraqi national guard soldiers were killed and 11 wounded Monday when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol, said Capt. David E. Nevers, a Marine spokesman.

Military officials also said today that they had captured a group of suspected insurgents, including leaders, operatives and financiers, after a raid on a sports complex in eastern Baghdad on Monday. Records and computers were also recovered in the raid, which concluded an operation code named Soprano Sunset, the officials said.

Other raids around the country in the last two days netted 18 other suspected insurgents, military officials said. Among them were seven suspected members of a bomb-making cell, captured Monday in the village of As Siniyah, about 150 miles north of Baghdad.

In Mosul, where insurgents have waged a brutal campaign against Iraqi security officers over the past month, American and Iraqi soldiers have detained more than 230 suspected insurgents over the past week, military officials said.

The detentions are the latest in a stepped-up American campaign to root out insurgents and pacify the country as the January elections approach. That campaign, beginning with the American offensive in Falluja last month, has disrupted the insurgents' ability to mount coordinated attacks, military commanders have said.

But major attacks have continued in recent days, including several apparent efforts to sow divisions between religious and ethnic groups here that started with a deadly car bomb outside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad on Friday, and continued with the church bombing in Mosul.

The first explosion occurred this afternoon in the northeastern part of the city, when a group of about 20 insurgents planted bombs in the sanctuary, forced three monks to leave, and detonated them from outside, witnesses said. The insurgents shouted "God is great" in Arabic as the bombs shattered the building, witnesses said.

A second church was bombed in northern Mosul later in the day. The denominations of the churches were not clear. Most Iraqi Christians are Assyrians, an independent Christian sect, and Chaldeans, Eastern-rite Catholics who recognize papal authority.

The bombings were not the first strike at Christians, who constitute less than 5 percent of Iraq's 24 million people. On Nov. 8, car bombs exploded almost simultaneously outside two Christian churches in southern Baghdad. A third bomb exploded that night outside the emergency room where most of the wounded had been taken, killing at least one and wounding dozens.

On Aug. 1, militants carried out five coordinated car bombings on Christian churches in Baghdad and Mosul, killing 12 and wounding dozens. Iraqi political figures and Muslim leaders condemned the attacks. But many in Iraq's 2,000-year-old Christian community remain deeply uneasy about the rise of fundamentalist Islam here since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and thousands are believed to have fled the country.

Iraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, voiced frustration with neighboring nations on Monday for not doing more to prevent foreign fighters from getting into the country, The Associated Press reported today.

"In my opinion, we have reached a stage in which if we do not see a real response from those countries, then we are obliged to take a decisive stance," Mr. Saleh said, without specifying what such a stance might mean.

By Rbert F. Worth
New York Times