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| Iraq |
| Killing of Samarra emir described as a blow to the insurgency |
| 2006-04-30 |
| U.S. forces killed a local leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and captured another in raids north of Baghdad on Thursday and Friday, dealing a blow to the insurgent organization's leadership in the violent city of Samarra, Iraqi police and U.S. military authorities said. U.S. troops tracked Hamadi al-Takhi al-Nissani, al-Qaeda's "emir" in Samarra, to a safe house north of the city Friday morning, the U.S. military said in a statement. As the soldiers approached the house, Nissani fled and was killed. Two other armed insurgents in the house were also killed, according to the statement. Police in Samarra who spoke on condition of anonymity gave a slightly different account, saying that the house was east of the city and that the three men were running to a getaway car when fire from an American helicopter killed them. On Thursday night, U.S. troops also arrested Abdul Qadir Makhool, another al-Qaeda leader in Samarra, and released a police officer who had been kidnapped by the group, Maj. Jamal Samarraie, an officer at the provincial Joint Command Center, said in an interview. The U.S. military referred to capturing an armed insurgent in a statement on Friday but did not give the man's name or say precisely when he had been captured. Nissani "was an individual who they had been working to capture and take down for some time," Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said in a telephone interview. "This is a very critical element in halting a lot of the illegal terrorist activity there." Samarra, a city of 70,000 residents 65 miles north of Baghdad, has long presented a challenge for U.S. and Iraqi government troops trying to stop violence in Salahuddin province. Last August, U.S. engineers built an 8-foot-high, 6 1/2 -mile-long dirt wall around Samarra, the provincial capital, limiting access to three checkpoints. Though the measure resulted in a drop in attacks, it did not prevent insurgents from destroying the Askariya mosque, a shrine sacred to Shiite Muslims, on Feb. 22. The attack triggered a wave of sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunni Arabs that has pushed the country toward civil war. U.S. military officials have said they believe the mosque attack was carried out by al-Qaeda in Iraq, a prominent insurgent group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It is unknown whether Nissani had any role. Samarra police said Nissani was the deputy of Haytham Sabaa, an al-Qaeda leader for all of Salahuddin province. "He was certainly a key individual responsible for terrorist attacks of all kinds," Johnson said. The blow to the al-Qaeda leadership in Samarra coincided with a surge in violence in the city of Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. An Iraqi general there said 58 people, most of them insurgents, had been killed over two days of fighting in the restive city, the Associated Press reported. The violence began Thursday afternoon when a large force of insurgents launched simultaneous attacks on five police checkpoints and a police station, the U.S. military said in a statement. Elsewhere in the city, a force of more than 100 insurgents attacked an army headquarters with a barrage of mortar fire, rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifle fire. Iraqi troops fought off all the attacks, the U.S. military said, killing 21 insurgents and capturing 43. A roadside bomb also killed a U.S. soldier traveling north of Baghdad on Thursday, the military said in a statement. On Saturday, in a video posted on an Islamic militant Web forum, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader, said hundreds of suicide bombings in Iraq had "broken the back" of the U.S. military, the Associated Press reported. It was the latest in a recent series of messages from the terrorist network. Zawahiri also denounced the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as "traitors" and called on Muslims to rise up to "confront them." The video was first obtained by IntelCenter, a U.S. government contractor that does work for various intelligence agencies. U.S. counterterrorism officials were aware of the video and analyzing it, two officials said on condition of anonymity. One of the officials, who would not be identified in compliance with office policy, said it was part of an ongoing propaganda blitz by al-Qaeda to demonstrate it is still relevant.] The seesaw nature of the violence and the constant dangers posed by the war are taking their toll on the Iraqi public, according to new poll data released by the International Republican Institute, a Washington-based organization that promotes democracy outside the United States. Although 45 percent of the 2,800 Iraqis questioned said they favored a government uniting the country's ethnic and sectarian factions, and only a small number supported the division of the country into separate parts, 52 percent said they thought the country was headed "in the wrong direction." Thirty percent believed the opposite. The poll was taken in late March, while the country's politicians were deadlocked over the choice of a new prime minister, and may have reflected the frustration of waiting for the parliament to make its choice. Meanwhile, some Iraqis marked what was once cause for mandatory national celebration: the 69th birthday of Saddam Hussein, the former president, who is in jail while being tried by his countrymen. In Auja, Hussein's home town, a group of about 200 young men showed some of the old spirit. A disc jockey played folk music, and guests ate cake as others chanted, "Our blood, our lives, we sacrifice for you, Saddam." Some read poetry describing the ousted leader as a symbol of the Arab nation. The birthday party went undisturbed by a passing police patrol, which left without saying anything. The town resounded with celebratory shooting and songs until midnight. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 "The town resounded with celebratory shooting and songs until midnight." Followed inexplicably by a dozen FAE bombs at 3 am.... I can dream, no? |
| Posted by: Fordesque 2006-04-30 21:42 |