By PATRICK QUINN Associated Press Writer

TIKRIT, Iraq (AP) - U.S. troops of the 4th Infantry Division arrested 92 people and seized weapons and ammunition in two dozen raids, including the largest-ever joint operation with Iraqi police, the U.S. military said Monday.

The operations were aimed at capturing those responsible for a series of deadly attacks against American forces.

The raids, which ended early Monday, were launched here in Saddam Hussein's hometown and in other Sunni Muslim areas in the division's sector, division spokesman Maj. Gordon Tate said. Those arrested included 12 men suspected of being behind a series of recent attacks against U.S. troops in the Tikrit area, he said.

Troops also seized weapons including Kalashnikov rifles, mortars and their firing tubes, 155 millimeter artillery shells and multiple rocket launchers, Tate added.

In another incident, 4th Infantry Division troops late Sunday killed one Iraqi and captured three others in a shootout nine miles south of Balad, U.S. officials said. In the car, troops found two M-16 rifles which belonged to two American soldiers who were abducted and killed in June, officials said.

The joint U.S.-Iraqi raid involved more than 200 American-trained Iraqi police and dozens of soldiers from the U.S. Army's 720th Military Police Battalion. The Iraqis were trained by the MPs, one of the only U.S. military units to patrol the city on a daily basis.

"The people we went after are the trigger-pullers attacking the coalition," said Lt. Col. David Poirier, who commands the 720th, based in Fort Hood, Texas. "We want to send the message that if you pull the trigger on the coalition, we will get you."

He said the operations were designed to "break the back of the Fedayeen" in the Tikrit area.

"They are off-balance, on the run, they know we are after them and that the Iraqi police are after them," he said.

U.S. troops have carried out dozens of raids, mostly at night, over the past two weeks, arresting men who have funded those known by the U.S. military as the trigger-pullers. They also have uncovered weapons caches, including two of the biggest found to date last Saturday. They included nearly three-dozen heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles, mortars and a ton of explosives used to make bombs.

The raids intensified after Iraqi resistance fighters shot and killed three Americans in an ambush two weeks ago just outside Tikrit. In a coordinated series of attacks and ambushes against U.S. forces last week, nine Iraqi fighters were also killed.

"We think all these people and weapons found in the past are linked. We think they are linked to the organized attacks and are also responsible for the assassination attempts against the Iraqi police as well."

The headquarters of the Iraqi provincial police, where a portion of the operation began just after midnight, had come under mortar attack three days before.

Driving through the sleepy streets of downtown Tikrit without headlights, the teams of Iraqi and U.S. Military Police fanned out through the narrow dirt alleyways, simultaneously storming all 15 houses, with the operation ending just after daybreak.

The operation was carried out after information received by the Iraqi police, and Poirier said the information was an indication that people in Tikrit have begun to tire of the near-daily violence.

"It's Saddam's hometown and there's a lot of family here. Some still believe he's going to return, but more and more they are realizing Saddam is gone and the old regime is dead," Poirier said. "Tikrit was a tough nut to crack. It's Saddam Hussein's hometown, but I think we have cracked it. That, of course, doesn't mean it's a safe place."