Snippets- On Thursday morning, coalition forces conducted five joint cordon-and- knock operations targeting former regime elements and facilitators, detaining 19 individuals. In a separate operation, coalition suspects -- coalition soldiers recognized and captured a suspected Ansar al- Islam facilitator, Wafsi Hunan (ph).
- On Tuesday, coalition forces conduced a raid near Tikrit, targeting a weapons dealer suspected of possessing Saddam Hussein’s personal collection of firearms. Six individuals were captured, one the brother of a suspected Fedayeen member, and another individual, Nessar Shayhab (ph), reported to be the nephew of Ibrahim al-Douri and a member of the local Fedayeen cell.
- An Iraqi Civil Defense Corps soldier was shot and killed near Tormea. Witnesses reported that a blue Opel fired at the soldier while he was walking down the street and hit him three times in the neck, head and chest. The car then stopped and took the soldier’s AK- 47 and fled the scene. Coalition forces and Iraqi police are investigating.
- On Wednesday afternoon, after detonating an improvised explosive device against a coalition passing -- against a coalition convoy passing west of Tormea, two Iraqi civilians were wounded and were taken to the local hospital for treatment. They are both in stable condition. Coalition forces identified the four attackers, returned fire, wounding one and capturing the other three.
- In the early morning’s -- in an early morning raid this morning, forces raided a location in Tikrit, looking for Abu Aimad (ph) al-Tikriti, a former brigadier general and the former director of military intelligence for northern Iraq. Al-Tikriti was also targeted for suspected leadership in a cell responsible for attacks against coalition forces and civilians. Al-Tikriti was captured along with three other individuals.
- Earlier this morning, coalition forces conducted a cordon-and- search of two objectives northeast of Hit to kill or capture the Gota (sp) and Moleq (sp) brothers, believed to be weapons dealers and active supporters in the region of anti-coalition elements. The operation was conducted without incident and resulted in the capture of 23 enemy personnel, including six of the eight primary targets.
- The Iraqi police station in Am Al-Mahawal (sp), located north of Al Hillah, was attacked by a group of belligerents yesterday. The Quick Reaction Force for Multinational Division Central South was dispatched to the location, and upon arrival two police were found wounded and seven assailants were captured. The patrol conducted a joint search with Iraqi police around the city and arrested four additional suspects. While returning to the police station, the patrol was attacked and one Iraqi -- an additional Iraqi policeman was wounded. Additional military assets were sent to reinforce the QRF, and a total of 11 detainees were taken to the Al Hillah police station for further investigation.
- To answer your question, we are about one-third of the way complete with the transfer of soldiers. We started in November. We’ll finish in about May. We started -- today, for example, we did the almost complete -- we have almost completed the transfer of outbound 101st Airborne soldiers and the inbound soldiers from the 2nd Brigade -- the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division. We have already completed down in multinational division southeast and multinational division central-south. We still have to do the Baghdad region, the west region and the north-central region.
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