 Thousands of Iraqi forces yesterday threw a security net over Baghdad to snare insurgents, who quickly struck back with a string of car bombings said to have been masterminded by Al-Qaeda's Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi. Four car bombs in and around the capital killed 16 people, most of them security personnel, in a swift response to Iraq's widest homegrown clampdown since the fall of Saddam Hussein over two years ago.
| Nobody expected them to throw up their hands and surrender... |
Nine soldiers taking part in "Operation Lightning" died in a suicide car bombing at their roadblock just south of the capital, while two policemen were killed when a suicide car bomber targeted their patrol in southwestern Baghdad. In western Baghdad, a car bomb targeting police commandos killed three people and wounded 20, an Interior Ministry source said, adding that police had then fought a firefight with men in the area. An earlier suicide bombing near the Oil Ministry left two dead, while violence elsewhere claimed the lives of a British soldier and seven Iraqis. Insurgent attacks nationwide have claimed the lives of around 700 people so far this month, following the swearing in of Iraq's first democratically elected post-Saddam government.
| Suicide car booms remain the weapon of choice, not only because they've got the fodder to carry them out, but also because they're so Islamic... |
"Squadrons and brigades directed by the sheikh of the mujahedeen Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi yesterday launched an operation ... planned and supervised by our sheikh," said an Internet statement attributed to his group. The operation was a reply to the "aborted encirclement plan in Baghdad announced by the Iraqi ministers of defense and interior", a reference to the security net expected to involve up to 40,000 Iraqi security forces that was launched the same day. It also claimed the deadly suicide bombing at the roadblock outside Baghdad.
| That's actually not an indication that Zark is alive and/or well. It's just an indication that his name has value to the turbans... |
It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the statement, the latest in a series of some times conflicting messages about the health of the Jordanian-born militant and his role in the insurgency. Nevertheless, the government claimed it had already captured hundreds of insurgents.
| So here's the meat of the article... |
"Search operations and raids have allowed us to arrest 500 people and find arms caches in several houses," said spokesman Leith Kubba, adding that "we are expecting reactions but this will have no effect on the general course of the operation."
| If the bastards weren't vicious and tenacious, it wouldn't be necessary to turn out 40,000 men to hunt them down. Good luck to our guys and to the Iraqis... |
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