"One minute ... 30 seconds ... go!"

Soldiers equipped with night vision equipment jump into the muddy fields and take cover by a wall as the helicopters disappear into the night.

"Snipers, go," a US captain whispers to troops near him who spread out to take up positions in houses identified several days earlier on satellite images.

Explosive charges blow in doors and set off cries that are quickly covered by the sounds of dogs barking and donkeys braying.

In one house, Iraqi soldiers gather a dozen women in one room and begin searching, throwing mattresses and blankets on the ground.

Sitting on a carpet with their heads covered by veils, mothers hold the youngest children, their dark, scared eyes following every move the troops make.

"Where are the men?" a young officer asks sharply.

"My two sons and my husband left three hours ago," the oldest woman replies.

She swears she does not know where they went, while another woman recites verses from Islam's holy book, the Koran, and rocks her son on her lap.

In another room, its walls covered with wrinkled images of Islamic holy sites, an Iraqi soldier tries to get information from a haggard boy lying on a bed.

"I don't know where my father is. I'm sick,'" he repeats after each question.

"When they heard the choppers coming they ran like rabbits," says the Iraqi commander, posted on a rooftop to coordinate the raid.

"We know that this village, which represents one large family, helps insurgents," he said. "Foreigners from Saudi Arabia pass through here on their way to fighting in Fallujah or Ramadi," two rebel hotspots nearby.

With a radio at his ear and a long list in hand, the officer tries to verify the identity of people picked up in other homes.

"They all have the same name; it's impossible," a US soldier tells him.

Outside, 15 men dressed in traditional white dishdasha robes, their hands tied behind their backs, emerge from a house and are lined up on the ground in front of a wall, bowed heads on their knees.

"Now we can identify them," the Iraqi commander says with a smile.

One by one they are brought before two cars that have their headlights turned on.

In the vehicles, two Iraqi intelligence agents who work for the army and who have infiltrated the town are tasked with the identifications.

"Bad guy, bad guy, bad guy," a US soldier repeats, following advice from the agents.

Of 15 taken into custody there, five are later released.

Suspects have numbers and two large Xs written on their foreheads and backs before being loaded into a pick-up truck that takes them to helicopters for transport back to Baghdad.

The Iraqi officer doesn't worry about cases of mistaken identity.

"Intelligence is not my job," he said. "My mission is to come and arrest terrorists.

"Their IDs will be confirmed in Baghdad."