A couple and their son as well as a woman neighbour taking part in the fight against Al-Qaeda have been killed by gunmen near the restive Iraqi city of Baquba, police and relatives said on Tuesday. "Armed men of Al-Qaeda attacked the home of Faraj Dahshem al-Zaydi in Sheikh village on Monday. They killed the 60-year-old man, his wife, their son Mustafa, 18, and a 35-year-old neighbour," police Liutenant Colonel Najim al-Sumaidi told AFP. "The armed men put the three members of the family in a room of their home and gunned them down," he said.| Civil, wel-reasoned discourse, Islamic-style. |
An army officer, meanwhile, said Iraqi soldiers killed two Saudi nationals and an Algerian suspected of belonging to the Al-Qaeda terror network in a pre-dawn raid on Tuesday near the northern city of Samarra. Iraqi special forces arrested a local Al-Qaeda leader, identified as Mahmud al-Rahmani, after an operation against a hideout in an industrial district of Samarra, Lieutenant Muthanna Shakir Mahmud said. During an interrogation, Rahmani told the soldiers of a second hideout in a Samarra suburb. The soldiers raided the site and clashed with the Saudis and the Algerian, killing all three, Mahmud said.
| [BANG! BANG! BANGETY BANG!] "Stick 'em up!" |
In Mosul, northeast of Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up his car in an attack on security forces, killing an Iraqi soldier and wounding three others. And a police officer was killed when two gunmen fired into his vehicle near the city of Baquba, security sources said.
US and Iraqi forces have been seeking for more than a year to flush out Al-Qaeda operatives and have pacified several areas, including districts of Baghdad and the western province of Anbar.