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BAGHDAD (AFP) - US-led forces seized a suspected militant with ties to Iran and killed five others in an early morning raid in the east Baghdad Shiite stronghold of Sadr City on Saturday, the military said.

After US and Iraqi forces detained the suspect, nine vehicles sped into the area in an apparent attempt to foil the operation, prompting the troops to call in an air strike which killed at least five militants, a military statement said.

"Intelligence reports indicate the individual detained is suspected of having direct ties to a senior leader of a significant EFP network as well as acting as a proxy for an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officer," the statement said, referring to explosively formed penetrators.

The United States has long accused Iran of supplying EFPs, sophisticated explosive devices that discharge a ball of molten metal capable of tearing through an armoured vehicle, to Shiite militias.

The suspect was allegedly involved in "the transport of weapons and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, from Iran to Iraq, as well as bringing militants from Iraq to Iran for terrorist training," the statement said.

Iran and the United States often trade accusations of each other's activities in Iraq and on Monday their respective ambassadors will hold landmark meetings in Baghdad.

Saturday's raid came a day after radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's return to public life after months in hiding and a series of coalition operations targetting his followers.

In the Friday sermon delivered in the southern Iraqi town of Kufa, Sadr called on his forces to refrain from fighting the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police.

But hours later a joint British and Iraqi force killed one of his senior commanders while trying to detain him at a checkpoint in the southern city of Basra.

According to a statement by coalition forces, Iraqi special forces and British troops opened fire on the vehicle carrying the commander, Wisam Abu Qader, when it failed to slow down at the checkpoint.

A gunbattle ensued in which militants unleashed a barrage of small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades on the checkpoint, the statement said. British and Iraqi forces responded, killing two people, including Abu Qader.

Sadr's well-armed but increasingly fractured Mahdi Army militia has largely cooperated with a three-month-old US-led security crackdown in the capital, but rogue elements continue to battle US and Iraqi forces.