U.S. forces killed 20 al-Qaida terrorists in an operation north of Baghdad on Friday, the U.S. military said.

U.S. ground forces raided buildings in Thar Thar area in Salahudin province to hunt "associates with links to multiple al- Qaida in Iraq networks," the military said in a statement.

The troops received heavy machine gunfire from one of the buildings and returned fire, killing two armed terrorists, the statement said.

"Coalition Forces continued to be threatened by enemy fire, causing forces to call in close air support. A Coalition aircraft performed the air strike, resulting in 18 more armed terrorists killed," it said.

Afterwards, U.S. troops searched the target and found "multiple weapons caches consisting of AK-47s, machine guns, rocket- propelled grenades, anti-personnel mines, explosives, blasting caps and suicide vests," it said.

Coalition forces found that two women were among the deaths, it said.

Source: Xinhua