AFP
US-led forces on Friday seized control of the lawless town of Latifiyah south of Baghdad, in the latest effort to restore order in war-torn Iraq ahead of January polls. But violence raged elsewhere, as a British security firm announced four of its employees had been killed a day earlier in attack on Baghdad's "Green Zone" and 12 more bodies were discovered by US troops fighting insurgents in the north. An AFP correspondent in Latifiyah said US troops had entered the town Friday and reclaimed control of the roads, posting snipers on roofs as their offensive was met by little or no resistance. Latifiyah is a Sunni majority town which lies only 25 miles south of Baghdad, commands access from the capital to key cities in the south, and is considered a rear base for extremist insurgents based in the Fallujah area. "We're starting to suffocate them, and they're not liking it. We have a large target list, and we're going to continue to stay after them," a marine spokesman told AFP.
US marines, backed by British forces brought in from Basra and Iraqi troops, kicked off "Operation Plymouth Rock" on November 23, in a bid to root out the insurgency in the so-called "death triangle". The vast sweep of the lawless badlands south of Baghdad was launched quick on the heels of an onslaught on the insurgent capital of Fallujah. Marines were thought to be wrapping up their offensive in the radical Sunni bastion, but the city's main insurgent organisation announced in a statement Friday that it had managed to regroup and was resuming its attacks. An AFP reporter embedded with the US military in Fallujah said gunfire and explosions appeared significantly more intense than in the previous days.
Thousands of US and Iraqi troops were also deployed in the northern city of Mosul last week after rebels launched devastating attacks against police stations. On Friday, US soldiers found 12 unidentified bodies in the restive city, bringing to 40 the number of corpses discovered over the past week there. Most of those which have been identified appear to belong to members of the Iraqi security services, in what US military officials described as an intimidation campaign against Iraqi securitymen and civilians waged by the rebels.
Violence was also rife in the capital, as a British company with one of the largest contingent of private security guards in Iraq announced that four of its employees were killed in an attack the so-called "Green Zone" on Thursday. Their nationalities were not immediately known, but a spokesman for Global Risks Strategies said that more of the firm's staffers were also wounded in the attack. The Green Zone is the most strategic site in Iraq, a heavily-fortified compound which houses all the nation's key institutions as well as the US and British embassies.
As it continued to back US troops in a crackdown on rebel Sunni areas across the country, the Iraqi government was nevertheless trying to woo moderate Sunni Muslims into taking part in the elections. Faced with a threatened boycott by Sunni Arab parties of the landmark elections, which they say are premature and jeopardised by relentless nationwide violence, the government has made two gestures towards the former ruling minority. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced Thursday that his cabinet would engage in contacts with members of the opposition who were excluded from an international conference on Iraq held earlier this week in Egypt. "The government will initiate contacts in Amman in the near future with representatives of the Iraqi opposition to encourage them to take part in the polls," he told reporters. Zebari said that among those who would be consulted over the January 30 elections would be members of the former Baathist regime, many of whom were booted out of top jobs after the 2003 US-led invasion to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
World leaders gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday had urged all parties to take part in the vote, the first free and multi-party elections in Iraq in half a century. The Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, which pulled out of the governing coalition during the recent onslaught on Fallujah, threatened to boycott the vote if the date was not postponed. Other leading Sunni figures on Iraq's political scene have hinted they could follow suit. The Iraqi electoral commission has extended the deadlines for registering parties and presenting full electoral lists in Sunni Provinces.
In further unrest Friday, a policeman was killed and three wounded in a gun attack on a checkpoint near the northern city of Kirkuk. A member of a political party accused by rebels of having links with the US military was also gunned down in Samarra, police said. Samarra is a Sunni Muslim city north of Baghdad which saw one of the first operations aimed at reconquering insurgent enclaves across the country in September. |