Snippets- Ambassador Bremer today began meeting with members of the Iraqi Governing Council to make available to them the full copy of the Zarqawi al Qaeda memo. It is a 17-page memo, in Arabic, and he is beginning the process of allowing Governing Council members to read it closely.
- Yesterday afternoon two U.S. soldiers were killed and five wounded near Sinjar when confiscated enemy ammunition was being moved to a demolition point. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded, killing one soldier instantly and wounding five others. A second soldier died en route to the 61st Combat Support Hospital. Three soldiers are in stable condition at the 61st, and two other soldiers have been returned to duty.
- Yesterday Navy divers recovered the remains of an Iraqi policeman lost on 25 January while patrolling the Tigris River with U.S. soldiers. The remains have been positively identified and returned to Iraqi authorities, and the search continues for the lost U.S. soldiers.
- A coalition patrol observed 10 men armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers north of Mukadiyah (ph) on the evening of February 9th, apparently establishing an ambush position. In the ensuing firefight, coalition soldiers killed 10 enemy and recovered five AK-47 assault rifles, four rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 2 RPK machine guns, two hand grenades, and a pair of night-vision goggles. The remains of those killed have been turned over to Iraqi officials.
- Additionally, 2,040 persons in 66 buses crossed back into Iraq at the Arar crossing site as they returned from the Hajj. To date, 5,357 persons have returned from Saudi Arabia through this region.
- Yesterday morning, 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers conducted a cordon and search in Ul Walium (ph) to kill or capture anti-coalition forces. The operation resulted in the capture of six enemy personnel, including three of the primary targets. Also confiscated were small arms weapons, five doorbells, six car-phone kits, phones, wire, identification cards and miscellaneous documents indicating that they were attempting to construct remote-controlled improvised explosive devices.
- Yesterday, 50,000 Iraqis gathered peacefully in An Najaf in preparation for the election of the next Imam of the Ali Shrine on 17 February. The event was peaceful and concluded without incident.
- Well, first of all, today was a tragic day for the Iraqi police service. They lost a number of police officers in the line of duty. I would like to report that this is the first day I’ve had to stand up here and say that; it is not. Nuri Badran has said that over 300 of his police officers have been killed since last April. Yet they continue to come back to work every day. They continue to get larger and larger; they continue to grow. We have approximately 70,000 persons in the police service right now. And I think the greatest compliment and the greatest credit to the Iraqi police service is that despite the fact that this is an almost daily event that they are attacked, threatened, terrorized, they still come back to work. And the overall number of the Iraqi police service gets larger and larger every day. And so we don’t think that after repeated attacks and repeated bombings directed against the Iraqi police service that the recruiting efforts will be swayed by this one event today, since they’ve had so many others before this.
- At approximately 21:45 last night, military forces were -- reported that there was an explosion outside of Sheikh Antar’s (sp) house in Ar Ramadi. The suicide bomber was a male between 22, 27 years of age. He apparently was wearing a black male dress with a tan jacket. He had -- the bomb was strapped to his body in a vest around his waist. As you might expect, the suicide bomber has -- was killed, and the civilian authorities have taken four additional persons that were wounded in that event to the hospital. So we had a total of five persons injured from that explosion, and Sheikh Antar (sp) was not injured in that event.
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