"We didn't miss them by hours ... but certainly over the past weeks and months there was activity at the house," he told The Associated Press.

"They had invested in it, in terms of the shackles on the walls, the treadmills. It was a place they used for a good period of time," added Solomon, who is from Boston.

Solomon said the military worked with members of the Sons of Iraq to locate the house. Sons of Iraq is a phrase often used by the military to describe US-funded Sunni tribesman who are now fighting al-Qaida.

The military, meanwhile, announced a flurry of raids over the last several days in which a total 13 suspected insurgents were killed and dozens captured.

The heaviest clash involved the Tal Afar Special Weapons and Tactics team, made up of US forces and Iraqi SWAT teams.

Last Sunday, it targeted a cell responsible for assassinations and bombing attacks in the Tal Afar area of Iraq's restive Ninevah province, the military said in a statement.

During the raid, several fighters opened a barrage of gunfire at the Iraqi and US troops, killing the three Iraqi soldiers and wounding three others.

The US-Iraqi team killed nine suspected insurgents in the ensuing gunfight. Three Iraqi civilians were wounded and treated at the scene and eight suspected cell members were detained for questioning, the military said.

During one of the other operations, US soldiers shot and killed a man who drew a pistol on them and then tried to detonate an explosives-laden suicide vest near the city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

(China Daily via Agencies March 7, 2008)