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| Iraq |
| 3 Insurgents, U.S. Soldier Killed in Iraq |
| 2006-04-28 |
| Iraqi forces killed a local al-Qaida in Iraq leader and two other insurgents in a raid north of Baghdad on Friday, and roadside bombs killed an American soldier and an Iraqi policeman, officials said. The death toll in two days of fighting around Baqouba climbed to 58, including seven Iraqi soldiers, Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Awad said. Provincial police chief Maj. Ghassan al-Bawi said troops and police were on the streets of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, on Friday and roads to the city were closed because of fears the insurgents might regroup and launch more attacks. Iraqi commando forces, acting on a tip, raided a house where Hamid al-Takhi, the local al-Qaida in Iraq leader, and the two other insurgents were hiding just outside Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, said police Capt. Laith Mohammed. Al-Takhi, known as the 'emir' of Samarra, was gunned down while fleeing the house, and the other two militants while trying to defend it with grenades, the U.S. military said. After they were killed, the Iraqi troops found a car parked nearby containing a grenade launcher, rockets, AK-47s, grenades, and a shotgun, the U.S. military said. Mohammed said al-Takhi had been responsible for many insurgent attacks against coalition forces and civilians in the area. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq - the country's most feared insurgent group - appeared in a video earlier this week trying to rally Sunni Arabs to fight Iraq's new government and denouncing Sunnis who cooperate with it as 'agents' of the Americans. Also Friday, two mortars or rockets were fired at downtown Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where Iraq's government meets and the U.S. Embassy is located. One landed inside the zone but failed to detonate, while the other exploded nearby on the other side of the Tigris River, the U.S. military said. No casualties were immediately reported. The American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb that hit a military vehicle north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Friday. The bombing Thursday raised to at least 2,397 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. On Friday, the weekly day of worship in mostly Muslim Iraq, a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol exploded in southwestern Baghdad at 8:20 a.m., killing one policeman and wounding two, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein. Around the same time, police found the corpses of two middle-aged Iraqi men in a mostly Sunni Arab neighborhood of western Baghdad, Hussein said. The men, handcuffed, blindfolded and bullet-ridden, appeared to be the latest victims of a wave of kidnappings and killings by Sunni and Shiite death squads that target civilians. New information also emerged about an unusual series of coordinated attacks by insurgents on Thursday in and around Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Using mortar rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire, the insurgents attacked five police checkpoints, a police station and an Iraqi army headquarters, Iraqi and U.S. officials said. Clashes and raids continued through the night, Iraqi officials said. In addition to the seven Iraqi soldiers, Ahmed said 49 insurgents were killed and 74 others were arrested. U.S. officials said two civilians were killed and the wounded included 10 Iraqi soldiers, four policemen and four civilians. |
| Posted by:Steve |