About 500 US and Iraqi soldiers have waged an offensive against insurgents in the flashpoint city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, the US military said on Tuesday.

Approximately 100 Iraqi army soldiers and 400 US soldiers conducted their offensive, code-named Operation Rams, since Sunday, the military said in a statement.

The forces discovered four weapons caches, one of them was significant in size and contained dozens of mortar rounds, rocket propelled grenades, anti-mortar missiles and dozens of small arms weapons and bomb making material, the statement said.

It added that "Iraqi and Coalition Forces also detained five suspected al-Qaida in Iraq terrorists during the operation." "There have been no reports of civilians, Iraqi army soldiers or US forces injured or killed as a result of the operation," said the statement.

Operation Rams is the sixth in a series of disruption operations conducted by the US and Iraqi army in an attempt to curb insurgency in the Anbar provincial capital Ramadi, according to the statement.

(Xinhua News Agency December 7, 2005)