BAGHDAD, Iraq - Thousands of Iraqi troops launched a crackdown in Kirkuk on
Saturday, ordering residents to stay in their homes in an effort to put down
violence that has swelled in the north amid efforts to rein in bloodshed in
Baghdad.
An Iraqi police truck patrols the
deserted streets of Kirkuk, 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad,
Saturday Oct. 7, 2006. Some 2,000 police and Iraqi soldiers imposed a
curfew in Kirkuk to conduct a series of raids, arresting 150 suspected
insurgents and seizing more than 220 assault rifles, police said.
[AP] |
Elsewhere in the north, a suicide bomber rammed a police checkpoint with an
explosives-packed car, killing 14 people in the town of Tal Afar. It was the
deadliest attack in a day that saw 26 Iraqis killed around the country.
In March, President Bush had pointed to Tal Afar as an example of progress
made in bringing security to Iraq after a major U.S. offensive swept through the
town, 30 miles from the Syrian border.
But after a period of quiet, Saturday's was the fourth suicide attack in the
town in the past three weeks.
Thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops have been carrying out an intensified
sweep of Baghdad since August, searching neighborhood by neighborhood to root
out insurgents and militias who have killed thousands this year.
But at the same time, shootings, bombings and other attacks has been swelling
in northern areas such as Kirkuk and Mosul, the capital of the province where
Tal Afar is located, though the bloodshed has not been on the scale seen in
Baghdad.
The U.S. military announced Saturday that a U.S. soldier was killed Friday
near Beiji, about 60 miles southwest of Kirkuk.
Authorities in Kirkuk this week completed digging a 10-mile trench around the
city's southern and western edges aimed at cutting off side roads to prevent car
bombs from being brought into the city. Intensified checkpoints were set up on
city entrances that remained.
On Saturday, authorities announced a curfew had been extended to
round-the-clock "until further notice," ordering all residents off the streets,
said Kirkuk police chief Lt. Gen. Sherko Shaker.
"This operation comes as a measure to cleansing Kirkuk from weapons, as well
to prevent the militants from having any chance to reorganize their abilities,"
he said. "We shouldn't give them any chance to rest."
Troops conducted searches and raids on Saturday in the southern and western
sectors of the city, where most of the Sunni Arab population is centered. So
far, 150 suspected Sunni insurgents have been arrested and more than 220 assault
rifles have been seized, Shaker said.
Kirkuk, located 180 miles north of Baghdad, is a major oil center and the
focus of an ongoing struggle for power between its large Sunni and Kurdish
populations.
The Kurds want to include the city in their autonomous zone further north and
are working to resettle thousands of Kurds who were driven out during the regime
of Saddam Hussein and replaced with Sunni Arabs.
Al-Qaida in Iraq and another major Sunni group, Ansar al-Sunna, have
increased their presence in regions west of the city, said Sheik Abdul-Rahman
al-Munshid, a top sheik in the Sunni Obeid tribe. He blamed Kurdish efforts in
the city for fueling Sunni Arab support for insurgents.
"The demands of the Kurdish political forces and their attempt ... to work to
make Kirkuk part of the northern region that have created worry among the
non-Kurdish groups," he said.
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed vehicle into a police
checkpoint in Tal Afar, killing four policemen and 10 civilians. Some of them
died when parts of nearby homes collapsed from the force of the blast.
In nearby Mosul, gunmen killed a woman whose son works with the city police,
Mosul police Col. Abdel-Karim al-Jubouri said. A Kurdish lawyer was shot to
death in front of his home in the evening.
Gunmen killed five people in separate shooting attacks on roads northwest of
Mosul, including three Iraqis who worked at a nearby military base.
In Baghdad on Saturday, gunmen sprayed a Shiite-owned bakery in the Mansour
district with bullets, killing two people and wounding one.
More bodies with bound hands and signs of torture on them were found; two
were in the Tigris River in downtown Baghdad and five others were dumped in a
southeastern suburb.
Meanwhile, the U.S. command said it had captured 28 suspected terrorists in a
series of nine raids early Tuesday in the Jisr Diyala neighborhood of
southeastern Baghdad. Among those were three "high value individuals, including
the No. 9 person on the division's high-value target list."
