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By VANESSA ARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer
36 minutes ago
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces trapped dozens of insurgents Wednesday during a two-hour gunbattle at a police station south of Baghdad, a day after 100 masked gunmen stormed a jail near the Iranian border and freed more than 30 prisoners, most of them fellow insurgents.
Sixty gunmen, firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, attacked the Madain police station before dawn, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammadawi said. U.S. troops and a special Iraqi police unit responded, capturing 50 of the insurgents, including a Syrian, al-Mohammadawi said.
Four policemen, including one commander, were killed and five were wounded, he said. None of the attackers was killed.
Madain, about 14 miles southeast of Baghdad, is at the northern tip of Iraq's Sunni-dominated "Triangle of Death," a region rife with sectarian violence — retaliatory kidnappings and killings in the ongoing conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.
In a highly publicized episode last April, there were reports that Sunni militants had seized 100 Shiites and threatened to kill them unless all Shiites left the Madain area. Iraqi security forces swept into the region and found no hostages.
In the capital, roadside bombs that targeted police patrols wounded at least six policemen, including four who work as guards at the Education Ministry, police said. Gunmen in western Baghdad attacked a truck carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims returning from a religious commemoration in the city of Karbala, killing one, police said. Ten were wounded.
Also early Wednesday, gunmen killed three civilians transporting bricks on a country road outside the city of Baqouba northeast of Baghdad, police said. A roadside bomb then exploded when a police patrol went to the site, wounding one officer, police said.
The body of a man wearing an Iraqi military uniform was delivered to a morgue in the southern city of Kut, a morgue official said. The man had been killed outside Madain, he said.
In the Tuesday attack in Muqdadiyah, about 100 gunmen cut phone wires and fired rocket-propelled grenades in a daring operation that freed 18 fellow insurgents who had been captured in police raids just two days earlier.
Police said 15 other captives were sprung in the assault on the Muqdadiyah lockup. Twenty Iraqi security men and at least 10 insurgents were killed in the attack.
In an Internet posting Tuesday night, the military wing of the Mujaheddin Shura Council, a militant Sunni Muslim insurgent group, purportedly claimed to have carried out the operation. The posting said the group killed "40 policemen, liberated 33 prisoners and captured weapons." The claim was posted on the Iraqi News Web site and could not be independently verified.
With the telephone lines cut, the insurgents had 90 minutes to battle their way into the law enforcement compound before police reinforcements showed up from the nearby villages of Wajihiyah and Abu Saida, police said.
Muqdadiyah, on the eastern fringe of the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad, is about 25 miles from the Iranian border.
By the time the insurgents fled, taking away the bodies of many of their dead compatriots, nearly two dozen cars were shot up and set on fire and the jail was a charred mass of twisted bunk bed frames and smoldering mattresses.
U.S. helicopters were in the air above the jail after the insurgents had fled. Police said there was firing into the air by residents, but it was not clear if the American aircraft were the targets. None was hit.
The insurgents whose incarceration apparently prompted the assault were detained Sunday during raids by security forces in the nearby villages of Sansal and Arab, police said.
Both U.S. and Iraqi military officials had said last year that the area was no longer an insurgent stronghold, but Tuesday's attack showed the militants still could assemble a large force, capable of operating in the region virtually at will.
The insurgency's strength, spiraling sectarian violence and the continuing stalemate over forming a government in Iraq have led politicians and foreign policy experts to say Iraq was on the brink or perhaps in the midst of civil war.
With an increasing number of Americans calling for a pullout of U.S. forces regardless of the consequences for Iraq, a powerful group of U.S. senators met with interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Tuesday to discuss prospects for formation of a national unity government.
The Bush administration views that step as all-important in establishing peace and opening the way for the start of a U.S. troop withdrawal as early as this summer.
Al-Jaafari said he believed Iraq's most difficult political hurdles had been crossed and predicted a new government would be ready in the coming weeks.
"I hope that the formation of the new government does not last beyond April," al-Jaafari said after the meeting.
Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said: "April is fine, but it is necessary that this commitment be kept in order for there to be continued support for the presence of American troops in Iraq."
The committee chairman, Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), a Virginia Republican, said decisions on the U.S. troop presence would be made not only by Bush, Congress and other leaders, but also by the American people — a seeming allusion to declining U.S. popular support for the Iraq war.
Most mainstream Iraqi politicians do not want the United States to withdraw troops until the insurgency is defeated, although some more radical leaders, like firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, demand an immediate pullout.
In other violence Tuesday, a U.S. soldier with the 4th Infantry Division was killed by small-arms fire while patrolling the streets of western Baghdad, the military reported. At least 2,315 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
36 minutes ago
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces trapped dozens of insurgents Wednesday during a two-hour gunbattle at a police station south of Baghdad, a day after 100 masked gunmen stormed a jail near the Iranian border and freed more than 30 prisoners, most of them fellow insurgents.
Sixty gunmen, firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, attacked the Madain police station before dawn, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammadawi said. U.S. troops and a special Iraqi police unit responded, capturing 50 of the insurgents, including a Syrian, al-Mohammadawi said.
Four policemen, including one commander, were killed and five were wounded, he said. None of the attackers was killed.
Madain, about 14 miles southeast of Baghdad, is at the northern tip of Iraq's Sunni-dominated "Triangle of Death," a region rife with sectarian violence — retaliatory kidnappings and killings in the ongoing conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.
In a highly publicized episode last April, there were reports that Sunni militants had seized 100 Shiites and threatened to kill them unless all Shiites left the Madain area. Iraqi security forces swept into the region and found no hostages.
In the capital, roadside bombs that targeted police patrols wounded at least six policemen, including four who work as guards at the Education Ministry, police said. Gunmen in western Baghdad attacked a truck carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims returning from a religious commemoration in the city of Karbala, killing one, police said. Ten were wounded.
Also early Wednesday, gunmen killed three civilians transporting bricks on a country road outside the city of Baqouba northeast of Baghdad, police said. A roadside bomb then exploded when a police patrol went to the site, wounding one officer, police said.
The body of a man wearing an Iraqi military uniform was delivered to a morgue in the southern city of Kut, a morgue official said. The man had been killed outside Madain, he said.
In the Tuesday attack in Muqdadiyah, about 100 gunmen cut phone wires and fired rocket-propelled grenades in a daring operation that freed 18 fellow insurgents who had been captured in police raids just two days earlier.
Police said 15 other captives were sprung in the assault on the Muqdadiyah lockup. Twenty Iraqi security men and at least 10 insurgents were killed in the attack.
In an Internet posting Tuesday night, the military wing of the Mujaheddin Shura Council, a militant Sunni Muslim insurgent group, purportedly claimed to have carried out the operation. The posting said the group killed "40 policemen, liberated 33 prisoners and captured weapons." The claim was posted on the Iraqi News Web site and could not be independently verified.
With the telephone lines cut, the insurgents had 90 minutes to battle their way into the law enforcement compound before police reinforcements showed up from the nearby villages of Wajihiyah and Abu Saida, police said.
Muqdadiyah, on the eastern fringe of the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad, is about 25 miles from the Iranian border.
By the time the insurgents fled, taking away the bodies of many of their dead compatriots, nearly two dozen cars were shot up and set on fire and the jail was a charred mass of twisted bunk bed frames and smoldering mattresses.
U.S. helicopters were in the air above the jail after the insurgents had fled. Police said there was firing into the air by residents, but it was not clear if the American aircraft were the targets. None was hit.
The insurgents whose incarceration apparently prompted the assault were detained Sunday during raids by security forces in the nearby villages of Sansal and Arab, police said.
Both U.S. and Iraqi military officials had said last year that the area was no longer an insurgent stronghold, but Tuesday's attack showed the militants still could assemble a large force, capable of operating in the region virtually at will.
The insurgency's strength, spiraling sectarian violence and the continuing stalemate over forming a government in Iraq have led politicians and foreign policy experts to say Iraq was on the brink or perhaps in the midst of civil war.
With an increasing number of Americans calling for a pullout of U.S. forces regardless of the consequences for Iraq, a powerful group of U.S. senators met with interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Tuesday to discuss prospects for formation of a national unity government.
The Bush administration views that step as all-important in establishing peace and opening the way for the start of a U.S. troop withdrawal as early as this summer.
Al-Jaafari said he believed Iraq's most difficult political hurdles had been crossed and predicted a new government would be ready in the coming weeks.
"I hope that the formation of the new government does not last beyond April," al-Jaafari said after the meeting.
Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said: "April is fine, but it is necessary that this commitment be kept in order for there to be continued support for the presence of American troops in Iraq."
The committee chairman, Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), a Virginia Republican, said decisions on the U.S. troop presence would be made not only by Bush, Congress and other leaders, but also by the American people — a seeming allusion to declining U.S. popular support for the Iraq war.
Most mainstream Iraqi politicians do not want the United States to withdraw troops until the insurgency is defeated, although some more radical leaders, like firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, demand an immediate pullout.
In other violence Tuesday, a U.S. soldier with the 4th Infantry Division was killed by small-arms fire while patrolling the streets of western Baghdad, the military reported. At least 2,315 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
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