|
Iraq seized 200 suspected insurgents during poll
 Iraqi security forces detained more than 200 suspected insurgents, including four Arab foreigners, in a crackdown that helped reduce attacks during Sunday's election, the interior minister said today. "What happened yesterday was the result of the security plans put in place by the Interior Ministry and Iraq's security forces for the election," Falah al-Naqib told reporters. He said 129 suspects had been rounded up near Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown in the Sunni region north of Baghdad, out of a total of 202 detained nationwide. The detainees included two Saudis, an Egyptian and a Yemeni, he said. He said Iraqi security forces had also killed four insurgents in shootouts on polling day.US and Iraqi security forces enforced draconian measures for the election, shutting down Iraq's borders and airspace, banning civilian vehicles, imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew and putting tens of thousands of security men on the streets. Suicide bombs and mortar attacks, mostly in Baghdad, killed 35 people, but failed to prevent millions of Iraqis from going to the polls in the first multi-party election in decades. In the week before the election, the government announced the arrest of several senior aides to al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, suggesting it was making inroads against the group that had sworn to turn polling day into a bloodbath. However, some government officials cast doubt on the importance of the arrests, suggesting the announcements were designed to generate pre-election publicity. Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-01-31 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=55246 |