U.S. troops backed by attack helicopters clashed with militants in a Mosul neighborhood Tuesday, killing 20, the military and Iraqi officials said. In Baghdad, gunmen killed a Shiite Muslim cleric, and two missing Sunni clerics were found shot dead, police said. The killings of the clerics threatened to increase sectarian tensions in Iraq a day after the government vowed to crack down on anyone targeting Shiites and Sunnis. The defense minister said Iraqi troops no longer would be allowed to enter houses of worship or universities. "I am hearing that Iraqi National Guards are raiding mosques and Shiite town houses," Defense Minister Saadoun al-Duleimi said Monday. "We have issued orders to all units that say it is strictly prohibited to all members of the defense ministry to raid mosques, Shiite town houses and churches." Those orders follow a call by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for greater inclusion of Sunnis in Iraq's political process. Militants belonging to the disaffected Sunni Arab minority are believed to be driving the insurgency, and respect for mosques is a sensitive issue.
On Tuesday, U.S. troops and militants clashed in the northern city of Mosul, and heavy exchanges of machine-gun fire were heard, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. U.S. forces were seen advancing into the eastern neighborhood of Dhubbat, a known insurgent stronghold in Iraq's third-largest city. The city has suffered well-organized attacks by insurgents and dozens of deadly car bombs in past months. U.S. military spokesman Sgt. John H. Franzen said American troops were investigating reports that a homemade bomb was planted in the area when they came under fire from militants. "Forces were attacked and called in helicopters to support them in the battle with insurgents," Franzen said. He added that U.S. soldiers reported minimal damage to the two buildings and found no injured or dead insurgents. But Lt. Gen. Ahmad Mohammed Khalaf, commander of Mosul's police forces, told a press conference later that U.S. aircraft destroyed two homes where the militants were holed up, killing 20. He said U.S. soldiers fought 80 militants who had fled to Mosul from Qaim, a town near the Syrian border that was the scene of a recent weeklong American military operation aimed at destroying supporters of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A statement released earlier by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Mosul said troops detained nine suspected terrorists in separate operations Monday and Tuesday.
Amid the violence, Iran's foreign minister arrived in Baghdad to pledge his country's support for Iraq's reconstruction, marking the highest-level visit by an Iranian official since Saddam Hussein's ouster. "Our support to the Iraqi government and people will not be considered interference in Iraq's affairs," Kamal Kharrazi said through a translator after meeting Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari. Zebari, a Kurd, said militants have crossed the Iraq-Iran border "but we are not saying that they are approved by the Iranian government." Kharrazi also was to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a fellow Shiite.
In an Internet statement, a group claiming to be al-Qaida in Iraq criticized Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's recent visit to Iraq and her calls to include Sunni Arabs in the political process. The statement, posted on a Web site that has previously carried similar communiques, said Rice was not welcome in Iraq and had "desecrated" its land. The authenticity of the statement, signed by so-called spokesman Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, could not be verified. The group, believed to be led by al-Zarqawi, is held responsible for kidnappings, beheadings and killings and some of the deadliest bombings in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, has a $25 million bounty on his head — the same as for Osama bin Laden. "The hag wants the participation of the apostates and secularists who are claiming to be Sunnis," the statement said about Rice. "You should know that our (the Sunni) way is fighting you."
The statement also referred to the alleged desecration of Islam's holy book, Quran, by U.S. troops at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Newsweek magazine reported in its May 9 edition that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo placed Qurans in washrooms to unsettle suspects and "flushed a holy book down the toilet." The report, which sparked deadly protests, later was retracted by Newsweek. "You will not get away with insulting God's book," the statement said.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi Defense Ministry official, Sgt. Alwan Jabir Risan, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City neighborhood, yet another attack aimed at the nation's security apparatus. Gunmen abducted and killed former Baath Party member Kanis Mohammed al-Janabi and his three sons, aged 17 to 25, on Tuesday in Tunis, a village within the notorious Triangle of Death about 20 miles south of Baghdad, police Capt. Muthana Khaled said. The killers threw the bodies from a station wagon onto a road and sprayed the bodies with machine-gun fire before horrified onlookers, Khaled said. The Triangle of Death — which includes the cities of Latifiyah, Haswa and Mahmoudiya — has been a dumping ground for scores of slain Iraqis.
"The new government will strike against any criminal who tries to harm a Sunni or a Shiite citizen with an iron fist," al-Jaafari said Monday. His defense minister, Saadoun al-Duleimi, denied claims by Sunni religious leaders that Iraqi security forces were responsible for killing many of the 50 people whose bodies have been discovered in recent days, raising fears Iraq was slipping toward a broader sectarian conflict.
Elsewhere, Shiite cleric Sheik Mouwaffaq al-Husseini was killed in a drive-by shooting by unknown gunmen while driving in Baghdad's western Jihad neighborhood, police Capt. Taleb Thamer said. Two Sunni clerics were found shot dead after being kidnapped from different mosques in Baghdad's northern neighborhood of Shaab on Sunday by men wearing Iraqi army uniforms, a senior police official said on condition of anonymity. Sheik Hamed al-Khazraji, a spokesman from the Sunni Muslim Association of Muslim Scholars, identified the two slain clerics as Sheik Hassan al-Naimi and Sheik Talal Nayef and confirmed the circumstances of their kidnappings. An AP photographer saw al-Naimi's relatives preparing documents to retrieve his body from Baghdad's coroner's office, where it was taken. Elsewhere, a roadside bomb Tuesday killed one U.S. soldier and wounded another near Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, the military said. |
Iraq's interior and defense ministers said Thursday they have information that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been wounded, apparent confirmation of recent rumors that the Jordanian-born terrorist leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq was injured. "We have information in the Ministry of Interior that al-Zarqawi was wounded, but we don't know how seriously," Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said during a news conference. "We are not sure whether he is dead or not but we are sure that he is injured."