Posted on 12/23/2003 10:49:22 PM PST by kattracks
A barrage of explosions interspersed with loud automatic fire echoed across Baghdad as an airplane circled overhead in what the military said could be part of an ongoing operation.It was the most intense military activity in the capital for weeks.
The explosions, louder than mortars, began about 12:30 am (2130 GMT) and continued intermittently for about 20 minutes, sometimes interspersed with bursts of automatic fire.
The activity may be related to an operation known as Iron Justice and "may involve explosions and aerial activity," a military spokeswoman said.
There was intense activity, too, in Iraq's northern capital of Mosul on Tuesday as US forces, after a fierce gunbattle, arrested a childhood friend of Saddam Hussein's fugitive number two, considered one of the masterminds of the deadly anti-US insurgency, relatives and an Iraqi security force member said.
The aide of Izzat Ibrahim, identified as Sheikh Ghazi Hanash, head of the influential Tayy tribe, was detained at his Mosul home along with three of his sons, said Hanash's relatives and Waadallah Tewfik Hassan, an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps member who participated in the raid.
A firefight ensued that left one of the sheikh's bodyguards dead and his daughter wounded.
The US military had no immediate information on the arrests.
Hanash's home was marked by bullet holes and broken glass.
Ibrahim, Saddam Hussein's number two in the Baath party, is suspected of forging an alliance with Islamic extremists in battling the eight-month-old US-led occupation.
Following Saddam's arrest on December 13, Ibrahim, who suffers from leukemia, is the most senior former Iraqi official still at large.
The US military has put a 10-million-dollar price on his head and is eager to catch the last of Saddam's henchmen and silence the resistance once and for all.
However, despite Saddam's arrest 10 days ago and a major military sweep to round up suspected fighters, anti-US insurgents continue to carry out attacks.
A private security firm employee was wounded Tuesday when insurgents ambushed a US military convoy delivering new Iraqi money to a bank in Mosul.
A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) hit a Humvee, wounding an employee from Global Security, which is under contract to the coalition to accompany shipments of the new currency around Iraq, said Major Hugh Cate of the 101st Aiborne Division.
The man, whose nationality was not known, was rushed to a combat hospital after the attack which happened at 10:45 am (0745 GMT) in central Mosul.
A security guard at the Azhur bank said a blue Toyota had pulled up by the convoy and fired an RPG before speeding off.
A Turkmen judge was also shot dead late Monday in the northern city which had been relatively quiet before being rocked by a surge of violence in November.
The murder came just two weeks after a Christian judge was gunned down in the ethnically diverse city, where Sunni Arabs, Christians, Kurds and Turkmen live side by side.
US troops and Iraqi police captured six militants near Baquba, including a suspected Islamist leader, as the coalition scoured the region, 60 kilometres (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, for insurgents.
Soldiers arrested another 26 suspected insurgents in the restive town of Fallujah west of the Iraqi capital including two former generals and a special forces colonel.
US forces arrested arrested 20 men for suspected links to Ansar al-Islam, which US officials say is a terrorist organization, during a raid on the Kirkuk headquarters of the Islamist group Jamaa Islamiya, said police sources and a human rights activist.
Another 16 people were detained in the city for attacks on US forces, the sources said.
Also in Kirkuk, a policeman was wounded trying to separate Arab and Kurdish students fighting at the city's Technical College, as friction between the communities increased ahead of the US-led coalition's granting of full sovereignty to Iraq by the end of June.
The clash erupted after Kurdish students refused to allow the Iraqi flag to be raised during a celebration. Three Kurds and a Turkmen were arrested.
On top of the ethnic and religious tensions, Iraqis' nerves remain frayed by an energy crisis that has left Iraqis queuing for hours for gas.
Despite the strife, interim oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum told AFP that output from Iraq's southern fields had reached two million barrels per day, the same level as before the US-led invasion.
And in another positive development, Iraq's telecommunications ministry signed contracts with the three GSM mobile phone companies which won bids in October to provide services around the country.
The GSM service is expected to be up and running by early January.
By one ankle, hopefully. Or...
well, never mind...
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