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Sunday September 5, 11:49 PM
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Iraqi forces capture last giant of ousted Saddam regime
A sickly Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri was captured after a deadly gun battle in his hometown north of Baghdad, bringing to justice the last giant of Saddam Hussein's regime after a year-and-a-half manhunt, officials said. Iraq's national guard closed in on Ibrahim, stricken with leukemia, as he received a blood transfusion at a medical clinic in his birthplace of Ad-Dawr on Saturday, interior ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan Abdelrahman told AFP. The national guard, backed by US helicopters, pounced on Ibrahim as he left the clinic, said Abdallah Juburi, national guard commander in the nearby city of Tikrit. Ibrahim's men fought to the death, refusing to surrender their boss, who has a 10 million dollar price on his head, in the very same place where Saddam was captured by US troops on December 13. "He had many militants around him who tried to rescue him. Initial reports say there were around 70 people killed or wounded in these clashes," Abdelrahman said. People on the streets of Ad-Dawr vowed to take revenge for the 62-year-old hometown hero who started life as an ice-seller. The US military had no immediate comment on the arrest. Ibrahim, accused by Washington last fall of masterminding an unholy alliance between Saddam loyalists and Islamic militants, is the most high-profile capture since Saddam was nabbed. Iraqi State Minister Qassem Daoud told reporters in Kuwait that Saddam and his "clique," including Ibrahim, will begin before elections due in January. US military officials have down-played Ibrahim's significance in recent months, dismissing him as too ill to play a powerful role in the resistance. But Ibrahim laid the foundation for the Islamic extremist fervour that has come to dominate the post-Saddam Iraqi insurgency due to his work in the 1990s overseeing the Baath party's abandonment of secular principles for the language of anti-US fundamentalism. Since Saddam's arrest nine months ago, many of the old regime's army and intelligence units have taken up the banner of religious war, either from convenience or out of true conviction. The capture was a huge boon for the Iraqi security forces, who have regularly been attacked by insurgents, suffering losses such as a car bombing in Kirkuk on Saturday that killed 14 police and three civilians. "We considered this to be the main achievement for the national guard and it will be a great boost to the people of Iraq," Abdelrahman said. In other developments, Iraqi and US forces pressed ahead with some of their most agressive action against the insurgency in months. US troops battled rebels in the northern town of Tall Afar for a second day while Iraqi and US forces arrested 500 suspected militants in the heartland of the Sunni Muslim insurgency. Iraqi police and national guardsmen, assisted by US forces, raided the town of Latifiya, 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Baghdad, marking the first time the interim government has taken decisive action against a Sunni Muslim stronghold since it was sworn in on June 28. Twelve policemen were killed and 17 people wounded in the operation, with 500 suspected "terrorists" arrested and a large haul of weapons seized, including five barrels of TNT, an Iraqi intelligence officer said. The town is part of a virtual no-go zone for US troops, Iraqi police and foreigners and has earned the name "Fallujah's second head" after the Sunni rebel strongold west of Baghdad. The spot is where two French journalists, held by a group calling itself the Islamic Army of Iraq, disappeared on August 20. A leading radical Iraqi cleric Sheikh Mehdi al-Sumaidaie issued a fatwa or Islamic decree demanding the immediate release of the two reporters -- Le Figaro correspondent Georges Malbrunot and RFI reporter Christian Chesnot. The cleric, an influential figure among extremist Sunni Muslim groups, also lambasted the Iraqi government and US forces for staging the raid in Latifiya, saying it had harmed efforts for their release. US troops and insurgents also fought for a second day in Tall Afar, which the military claims serves as a way station for militants slipping into Iraq from Syria. Fighting erupted after gunmen fired on a US army convoy outside the town, 60 kilometres (40 miles) west of Mosul, police said. US soldiers and Iraqi national guardsmen then poured into Tall Afar and clashes broke out in the town centre, lasting for about two hours before the US and Iraqi forces withdrew, a police official said, adding that US helicopters opened fire on insurgents. The streets were quiet later Sunday. Elsewhere, the body of an Egyptian was found Sunday on a road north of the Iraqi town of Tikrit, in the latest in a string of gruesome murders of foreigners suspected of working with the Americans in Iraq. Two Iraqis were killed and five wounded Sunday in a US air raid near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad, medical sources said. The US military did not confirm any aerial attack but said it raided the area after one of its bases came under attack.
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