BAGHDAD — Civilian casualties mounted today as clashes between Shiite gunmen and U.S. and Iraqi troops spread to Baghdad's outskirts. Police said two women were among seven people killed in fighting overnight.

The U.S. military said today that 15 suspected militants were killed in separate attacks a day earlier in mainly Shiite areas.

Fierce fighting broke out during a military operation late Tuesday in Husseiniyah, a mainly Shiite north of Baghdad's embattled Sadr City district.

U.S. and Iraqi troops were backed by helicopters as they fought until this morning with Shiite militiamen who dominate the area, police said. Women and children were among 20 people wounded, they said.

U.S. soldiers responded after they were attacked by rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire, killing 12 "criminals" in three separate incidents Tuesday in eastern Baghdad, the military said.

A man planting a roadside bomb in northeastern Baghdad also was shot to death by American soldiers in northeastern Baghdad, while two others spotted with a mortar tube were killed in an airstrike, according to the military statement.

Clashes that have occurred daily since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, launched a crackdown against militias on March 25 have taken a heavy toll on civilians, although the U.S. military insists it takes all possible precautions to avoid hurting innocent Iraqis.

Two U.S. Marines and an Iraqi civilian also were killed when a bomb-rigged water tanker truck exploded at a checkpoint near the western city of Ramadi on Tuesday in another apparent strike by al-Qaida in Iraq in one of its former strongholds.

SUVA, Fiji — Excavators of the earliest human settlement in Fiji have found a cache of jewelry and high quality pottery dating back some 3,000 years and made by the Stone Age colonizers of the South Pacific.Patrick Nunn, professor of Oceanic Geoscience at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, announced the find Tuesday.He said the two-month excavation he led at Bourewa Beach on the southwest coast of Fiji's main island, Viti Levu, revealed stilt houses built above the sea, quantities of Lapita-decorated pottery, stone tools and jewelry."These people were artists," Nunn said.The Lapita people are believed to have migrated eastward from the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea to Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Solomon Islands and other Pacific islands.Fiji Museum staffer Sepeti Matararaba found the jewelry, made from shells, under an upturned clay pot, put there by someone about 3,000 years ago. When Matararaba turned the pot over, he uncovered a cache of nine shell rings of different sizes, four shell bracelets and six necklace pieces complete with drill holes.The site was likely a manufacturing center for shell jewelry and the cache a "deliberate burial of a shell jewelry collection" by the Lapita inhabitants, Nunn said.

CANBERRA, Australia — The Olympic flame arrived in Australia today for the next leg of the torch relay and was immediately whisked away to a secret location to avoid anti-China protesters.Meanwhile in Nepal, authorities forced a mountain climber with a "Free Tibet" banner in his bags off Mount Everest, which Chinese climbers carrying the Olympic torch plan to ascend next month.Criticism of China's human rights record has turned the torch relay into one of the most contentious in recent history. Anti-Chinese protests have dogged stops in Greece, Paris, London and San Francisco. Many countries, including Australia, have responded by modifying routes and boosting security.Yard-high fences were being erected along the route through the Australian capital, Canberra, where 80 runners will carry the torch on Thursday.