Fighting eased Sunday, the second day of a sweep through Tal Afar — a militant stronghold near the Syrian border — as insurgents melted into the countryside, many escaping through a tunnel network they dug under the ancient city in the north of Iraq. Iraqi and US military officials vowed to expand the offensive. The 8,500-strong Iraqi-US force continued house-to-house searches, and military leaders said the assault would push all along the Syrian frontier and in the Euphrates River valley. Cities and towns along the fabled river are bastions of the insurgency, a collection of foreign fighters and disaffected Sunni Muslims, many of them Saddam Hussein loyalists. About 5,000 Iraqi soldiers, backed by a 3,500-strong American armoured force, reported 156 insurgents killed and 246 captured. The force discovered a big bomb factory, 18 weapons cache's and the tunnel network in the ancient Sarai neighbourhood of Tal Afar, 100 kilometres east of the Syrian border. "The terrorists had seen it coming (and prepared) tunnel complexes to be used as escape routes," Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters in Baghdad.
Lynch said operations in Tal Afar were part of a much larger, countrywide plan to destroy insurgent and Al Qaeda bases, which included ongoing operations in Mosul, Qaim and the western town of Rutba. But in a separate statement, a group claiming to be an offshoot of Al Qaeda said it would retaliate against the government and security forces in the capital. "The Taifa Mansoura Army has decided to ... strike at strategic and other targets of importance for the occupation and the infidels in Baghdad by using chemical and unconventional weapons developed by the mujahedeen, unless the military operations in Tal Afar stop within 24 hours." It was not immediately possible to determine the authenticity of the statement, which was posted on a website known for its militant contents.