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300 iraqis killed in past 10 days { May 9 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Seven GIs are killed in Iraq
U.S. reports capture of leading insurgent
Monday, May 09, 2005
BY LIZ SLY
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
BAGHDAD -- The killing of seven American service members by insurgents was reported yesterday, as the U.S. military announced the capture of a top militant believed responsible for at least some of the recent wave of suicide bombings.
The deaths brought to eight the number of American servicemen killed in action over the weekend, an unusually high number after several weeks of reduced U.S. casualties that have prompted some military officials to speculate that the insurgency is waning.
A dramatic spike in insurgent violence that has killed more than 300 people over the past 10 days has mostly targeted Iraqi civilians and security forces. For the first time since April 28, no suicide bombings were reported yesterday, after an unprecedented 10-day onslaught of attacks that has terrorized much of the country.
In a separate development, more than 1,000 U.S. troops supported by fighter jets and helicopter gunships attacked villages yesterday along the Euphrates River, seeking to uproot a persistent insurgency in an area that American intelligence indicated has become a haven for foreign fighters flowing in from Syria.
Marine officials said the elaborate operation near the Syrian border, one of the largest involving U.S. ground troops since the battle for Fallujah last fall, is expected to last for several days. Plans to press the attack north of the Euphrates were temporarily derailed when insurgents on the south side of the river launched counterattacks, sparking heavy fighting in the small river town of Ubaydi.
U.S. military officials in Baghdad said forces that crossed the Euphrates had killed six insurgents and captured 54 more, using information gleaned from a captured aide to terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The latest deaths of U.S. service members came even as the Shi'a-dominated Iraqi parliament reached out yesterday to Sunni Arabs, approving four more of them to serve as government ministers.
The Iraqi National Assembly handed four Cabinet positions to the country's disaffected Sunni minority: defense, human rights, minerals and industry, and a deputy prime minister slot.
The move, intended to bring Sunnis into the government and ease sectarian tension, appeared to backfire. The would-be human rights minister promptly declined the post, and detractors immediately started criticizing the other nominees.
The U.S. military deaths reported yesterday included three Marines and a sailor who were killed in an engagement Saturday in Haditha, in the western province of Anbar, when their convoy was ambushed by insurgents operating from inside the local hospital, a military statement issued yesterday said.
First a car bomb destroyed one of the convoy's vehicles, which crashed and set the hospital on fire. Then, insurgents in the hospital attacked the Marines with rockets and small-arms fire, the statement said.
Yesterday, two soldiers assigned to the 2nd Marine Division died near Khalidiyah, which lies between the troubled towns of Fallujah and Ramadi, also in Anbar province. Their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device during combat operations, the military said.
Another soldier died yesterday and one was wounded when their patrol was struck by an improvised explosive device in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, the U.S. military said it captured a top insurgent believed responsible for many of the suicide bombings in Baghdad, including nine attacks April 29 and the assault by a large group of insurgents on the Abu Ghraib prison April 2.
Amar Adnan Muhammad Hamzah al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu al Abbas, was captured during an early morning raid in Baghdad on Thursday, according to a military statement. Zubaydi was a top aide to Zarqawi, and he prepared numerous car bombs for dispatch to Baghdad at his farm in Yusufiyah, in the notorious Triangle of Death south of Baghdad, the statement said.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the pause in suicide bombings yesterday was linked to the capture Thursday. There have since been at least three suicide bombings since then, including the twin attack Saturday on a private security convoy that killed 27 Iraqis and two American security contractors.
The two dead Americans were employed by CTU Consulting, a Fayetteville, N.C.-based security consultancy, the Associated Press reported. The company identified them as Todd Venette of Russellville, Ark., and Brandon Thomas, hometown unknown.
Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it detonated a booby-trapped car as a "convoy of CIA passed," according to a statement posted yesterday on a militant Web site. The authenticity of the claim could not be verified.
Also yesterday, the military reported the detention of 33 terrorists suspects in Baghdad on Saturday, including a high-ranking military officer in the former regime, and 17 terrorist suspects in Babil.
Gunmen also shot and killed Zoba Yass, a senior official in Iraq's Transportation Ministry, and his driver in southern Baghdad, police and transportation officials said.
More than 300 people, including American forces, have been killed in the torrent of insurgent attacks since Iraq's Cabinet was sworn in April 28 with seven positions undecided.
Parliament approved all six of the nominees placed before it yesterday by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. But one of the four Sunnis, the man tapped as human rights minister, rejected the post on the grounds of tokenism, tarnishing the Shi'a premier's bid to include the disaffected minority believed to be driving Iraq's deadly insurgency.
Iraqi politicians spent the first three months after historic elections Jan. 30 trying to form a Cabinet, but Jaafari argued yesterday the delay was necessary to ensure those selected had broad support.
Yesterday, the defense ministry went to Saadoun al-Duleimi, a former lieutenant colonel in Saddam Hussein's General Security Directorate who left Iraq in 1984 and lived in exile in Saudi Arabia until Saddam's fall in April 2003. A moderate, he comes from a powerful Sunni tribe in Anbar province, the homeland of the insurgency.
The oil ministry was returned to Ibrahim al-Uloum, a Shi'a who was accused of inexperience when he held the post in the first U.S.-picked Cabinet in the early months after the invasion.
Hashim Abdul-Rahman al-Shibli said he could not accept his appointment as human rights minister, which would have brought the total number of Sunni Arabs in the Cabinet to seven.
"Concentrating on sectarian identities leads to divisions in the society and state, and for that reason I respectfully decline the post," Shibli said at a news conference.
Jaafari also pledged yesterday to take "all necessary measures" to restore security and said the government could impose martial law, if necessary.
Material from Associated Press and The Star-Ledger's wire services was used in this report.
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