Iraqi security forces killed 14 “terrorists” and arrested almost 200 suspects, the government said on Monday, in a spectacular follow-up to their earlier capture of an alleged top-level Al Qaeda leader. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s office announced that over the previous 24 hours a large force of Iraqi troops and police swept through suspected insurgent strongholds in the Euphrates valley south of Baghdad. “Over the past 24 hours Baghdad and its outskirts witnessed a series of military operations carried out by security forces from the defence and interior ministries to achieve security and stability,” Maliki’s office said.| “A Sunni political party with MPs sitting in Iraq’s fragile ruling coalition condemned the raid and demanded that detainees be released.” |
Police in Hilla, south of Baghdad, said that US forces and aircraft assisted Iraqi troops in Monday’s arrest operation near Jorf al-Sahkr, but there was no immediate confirmation of this from US headquarters in Iraq. “An exchange of fire between gunmen and troops led to the death of an Iraqi soldier,” an officer said, adding: “The clashes continued for four hours. Iraqi forces managed to confiscate large caches of weapons during the raid, while planes from the coalition forces bombed a number of areas.”