Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said on Monday that the authorities have captured 147 suspected insurgents throughout the country, including the leader of an insurgent group just days after he took over for the previous chief, who was detained two months ago. Allawi identified the man as Raad al-Doury. He took over the top post of Jaish Muhammad, which is Arabic for Muhammad's Army, from Moayad Ahmed Yasseen, detained in November. Allawi has accused Jaish Muhammad of killing and beheading a number of Iraqis, Arabs and foreigners in Iraq."Moayad Ahmed Yasseen is still confessing to his crimes and he will stand trial soon," Allawi said. "Every day the terrorists name a new leader we capture him and they will stand trial." Allawi said Iraqi security forces are getting stronger every day.
In a separate attack on Monday, a suicide car bomb exploded in the courtyard of a police station in southern Baghdad, killing at least four policemen and wounding 10 others, police and witnesses said. A fake police car packed with explosives was used in the attack. The explosion took place in the Zafarniyah district, police commissioner Abdul Khaleq Hussein said. Witnesses said the explosion occurred as policemen were changing shifts. An Associated Press photographer saw a number of bodies inside the courtyard that was cordoned off by police. The Army of Ansar al-Sunna, one of the most violent militant groups in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement posted on its website, the group said it struck "apostate forces who are the henchmen of crusader forces in Iraq".
In other violence, the US military said its forces accidentally killed a 13-year-old Iraqi girl and wounded a 14-year-old boy near Baqouba, 57 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, "when a 1st Infantry Division observation post engaged an area producing unidentified smoke outside of a local forward operating base". "This is an absolute tragedy. We do not know at this time what the children were doing in the area," a military spokesman, Maj Neal O'Brien, said. "An investigation into what happened is underway." The US military also said that US troops "discovered a crater with the body parts of two anti-Iraqi force insurgents" when a roadside bomb they wanted to plant near Sadiyah, a southern Baghdad district, exploded prematurely.
On Monday, a militant group posted threats in at least two towns warning it would deploy "highly trained" snipers to target voters around Iraq during January 30 elections. The statement, signed by the previously unknown Secret Republican Army, said 32 snipers will stalk voters outside polling in Wasit, a largely Shiite province south of Baghdad that includes Kut, Numaniya and Suwaiyra. It didn't say how many would be sent elsewhere.