U.S. troops killed seven insurgents and captured three others in a Monday
raid that also left two children dead not far from the safehouse where terrorist
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi died in a U.S. bombing raid.
![Iraqi men spray water onto the burning car owned by Ahmed Ali al-Yasin, the brother of Asaad Ali al-Yasin the head of Samarra city council, after he was injured with his son Othman Ahmed Ali, by the explosion from a timed-bomb attached to the car, in the city of Samarra, Iraq, on Monday, June 12, 2006. [AP]](xin_56060313154957119031.jpg)
Iraqi men spray water onto the burning car
owned by Ahmed Ali al-Yasin, the brother of Asaad Ali al-Yasin the head of
Samarra city council, after he was injured with his son Othman Ahmed Ali,
by the explosion from a timed-bomb attached to the car, in the city of
Samarra, Iraq, on Monday, June 12, 2006. [AP] |
The military said the insurgents belonged to a terrorist cell with ties to
senior al-Qaida leaders involved in helping foreign fighters come to Iraq.
Insurgents escalated their attacks, killing more than 50 people across the
country Monday in a bid to show they were not defeated after al-Zarqawi's death.
The violence continued Tuesday with two car bombs killing at least 15 people and
wounding another 15 in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
More than 200 raids have been carried out since al-Zarqawi's death Wednesday,
some of them directly connected to what the U.S. military has described as a
"treasure trove" of intelligence gleaned from his safehouse.
Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said troops combing though
the debris found al-Zarqawi's diaries, telephone numbers, computers and a
database in one computer.
"We're cautiously optimistic that we have been very successful thus far,"
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said Monday.
"We realize this is not going to end the insurgency and that it's really going
to take the people of Iraq making that decision."
Caldwell also said a "high-value individual" with a $50,000 price on his head
was detained. He did not name the suspect, but said he was picked up based on a
tip.
The raid that killed the two children took place in Hashimiyat, a district of
Hibhib, where al-Zarqawi was killed.
Residents in Hashimiyat, near Baqouba about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad,
accused American troops of targeting civilians to find insurgents.
A man wearing a white dishdasha held the charred body of a child whose head
had been blown in half. Other Iraqis screamed "Allahu akbar," or "God is Great,"
and raised their hands despairingly as they put the charred bodies of children
-- a 6-month-old and a 4-year-old -- into wooden coffins and loaded them onto
trucks.
AP Television News video showed burned-out vehicles and a devastated house
with a large hole in the roof.
"That was an extremely unfortunate situation," Caldwell said. "Any time we're
out conducting operations against terrorist elements and they mix themselves in
with innocent young women and children and civilians, they in fact are asking
for that possibility to occur."
The military said in a statement that three terror suspects were wounded and
detained in the raid. Coalition forces seized a rocket-propelled grenade
launcher, five rockets, nine AK-47 assault rifles and 20 loaded ammunition
magazines.
"Coalition aircraft supporting the ground force immediately suppressed the
enemy fire, killing seven," the military said in a statement. "Following the
assault, coalition troops discovered two children had been killed. One child was
wounded and evacuated for treatment."
Police were the targets of both bombings in Kirkuk Tuesday morning. A parked
car blew up near a downtown police patrol, followed about a half hour later by
an apparent suicide attack outside the city's police headquarters, Brig. Gen.
Sarhat Qadir said.
In Baghdad, bombs in parked cars killed at least 11 people and wounded 54 on
Monday, police said. The first explosion in Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite
district, killed six people. A second bombing in an upscale western district
killed five and wounded 13, said police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razza.
In Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber plowed into
a gas station, killing four civilians and wounding more than 40, police Brig.
Gen. Abdul-Hamid Khalaf said.
A roadside bomb struck a minivan in southern Baghdad, killing six people and
wounding 10, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said. Nineteen others died in bombings,
including six who were killed when a suicide car bomber attacked a gas station
in Balad.
Al-Qaida in Iraq insisted in a Web statement that it remains powerful after
al-Zarqawi's death.
The statement said the group's leadership "renews its allegiance" to Osama
bin Laden. A separate Web statement posted Monday named Abu Hamza al-Muhajer the
new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
The name -- a pseudonym, as most militants are known -- was not immediately
known and did not appear to be on any U.S. lists of terrorists who have rewards
on their heads.
Radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for the resignations of three
Shiite Cabinet ministers, saying they were not qualified for the jobs.
Al-Sadr, a Shiite, accused at least one of them, Saad Tahir Abid, of having
ties to Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime, officials said.
Hassan al-Rubaie, a member of al-Sadr's bloc, said Abid, the minister of
state for provincial affairs, Liwa Semeism, the minister of state for tourism,
and Karim Mahdi, the transport minister, already had offered their resignations.
He said al-Maliki would decide whether to accept them soon.
A reconciliation conference among Iraq's feuding factions has been postponed
until August. The Arab League had hoped to hold the conference -- initially
planned for February -- on June 22 in Baghdad.
Shiites have firmly opposed opening the peace conference to Sunni Arab
officials from Saddam's former regime or from pro-insurgency
groups.
