BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi state television reported Thursday that Vice President Dick Cheney was in Baghdad. The American Embassy said it could not confirm the visit, but that Cheney could be in the country to visit troops for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Iraqis shop for fruit and vegetables in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2006, on an unusually quiet day. The United Nations said Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the highest monthly toll since the March 2003 US invasion and another sign of the severity of Iraq's sectarian bloodbath. [AP]

A military spokeswoman said that she could not confirm that Cheney was in the city.

Special coverage: Iraq After War Related readings: 3 Marines killed in Iraq Coalition forces conduct raid in Iraq

Also on Thursday, US and Iraqi forces swept into Baghdad's Sadr City slum in an early morning raid, killing four Iraqis, wounding eight and detaining five, police said.

Police Capt. Mohammed Ismail said coalition forces searched houses at about 4:30 a.m. and opened fire on a minivan carrying Iraqi workers in the al-Fallah Street area, causing the deaths and injuries. Iraqis often pay a small fee to crowd into such vehicles and travel early in the morning to sites where they hope to be hired as day laborers.

The US command said it could not immediately confirm Thursday's raid, which would be the fourth in six days on the Shiite slum home to the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The Mahdi Army is suspected of kidnapping an American soldier last month and taking scores of Iraqi hostages during an attack on a government building in Baghdad on Nov. 14.

Ismail said the coalition also detained five Iraqis during the raid.

Residents of Sadr City gathered around the bloodstained, bullet-riddled minivan.

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