A raid by U.S. and Iraqi forces on a suspected rebel training camp left 80 militants dead, the single biggest one-day death toll for rebels in months and the latest in a series of blows to the country's insurgency, Iraqi officials said Wednesday. The U.S. military announced late Tuesday that its air and ground forces backed Iraqi commandos during a noontime raid on a suspected guerrilla training camp near Lake Tharthar in central Iraq (news - web sites). Seven commandos died in fighting, the U.S. military said, but it didn't give a death toll for rebels. Iraqi officials said Wednesday 80 rebels died in the clash — the largest number of rebels killed in a single battle since the U.S. Marine-led November attack on the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah that left more than 1,000 dead. On Sunday, U.S. forces killed 26 assailants after they were ambushed south of Baghdad.Also Wednesday, a mortar shell or rocket landed on an elementary school in western Baghdad, killing at least one child and injuring three others, according to a police official who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution by attackers. Kids fled the schoolhouse, abandoning backpacks and books on desks littered with glass shards. One teacher wept outside as parents rushed to collect their children.
On the political front, Abbas Hassan Mousa al-Bayati, a top member of the United Iraqi Alliance, said negotiators from his Shiite-dominated bloc and a Kurdish coalition could tap a Sunni Arab to head the ministry of defense, which oversees the Iraqi army battling the insurgency. "The defense ministry will go to a Sunni Arab because we do not want Arab Sunnis to feel that they are marginalized," al-Bayati told The Associated Press. "They will be given one of the four major posts because we want them to feel that they are part of the political formula." Al-Bayati said his group and the Kurdish coalition, which together won 215 seats in the new 275 seat National Assembly, were expected to name a president on Saturday, the next step toward forming a new government. Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani is expected to fill the post. Fuad Masoum, a member of the Kurdish negotiating team, said no definitive decisions on divvying up the 32-member Cabinet have been made. He declined to confirm that a Sunni Arab will be named defense minister, but said that it was one option under consideration.
Handing the post to a Sunni Arab could help undermine support for the insurgency, while assuaging Sunni fears that the Shiites will dominate all aspect's of the country's upcoming government. The army chief of staff could be a Shiite, al-Bayati said. He added that his bloc was pressing for a Shiite to head the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police — Iraq's other main security force — and that a Kurd could become foreign minister. Amid the political wrangling, top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani had been scheduled to talk with Talabani on Wednesday. But the meeting was canceled due to "security concerns," said Meithemn Faisal, an official from al-Sistani's offices in Baghdad.