Posted on 09/26/2004 6:15:25 AM PDT by bunkerhill7
U.S. Troops Arrest Senior Iraqi Commander
17 minutes ago
By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - American troops have arrested a senior commander of the U.S.-trained Iraqi National Guard for alleged ties to insurgents, underscoring the obstacles toward building a strong Iraqi security force capable of taking over from U.S. troops and restoring stability to the country.
· U.S. Troops Arrest Senior Iraqi Commander AP - 17 minutes ago ·
Lt. Gen. Talib al-Lahibi, who previously served as an infantry officer in Saddam Hussein's army, was detained Thursday in the province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq .
Boylan said Sunday that authorities were trying to clear up confusion over what exact position al-Lahibi held within the Iraqi National Guard. He declined to provide details on the general's suspected ties to militants waging a 17-month insurgency to topple the interim Iraqi authorities and oust coalition forces from the country.
Violence persisted Sunday, as a rocket slammed into a busy Baghdad neighborhood, killing at least one person and wounding eight, hospital officials and witnesses said.
Hours after the attack, another loud blast shook the area near the Green Zone, site of the U.S. Embassy and the interim Iraqi government. Smoke rose above the zone and alert sirens sounded. It was not clear if anything had been hit.
Meanwhile, an Egyptian diplomat pressed an influential Sunni cleric on Sunday to help win the release of six Egyptian telecommunications workers abducted last week in Iraq. Diplomat Farouq Mabrouk refused to speak to reporters after his 30-minute meeting with Harith al-Dhari, who heads the Association of Muslim Clerics, an organization that has helped win the freedom of foreign captives.
Gunmen abducted two of the Egyptians on Thursday in a bold raid on their firm's Baghdad office — the latest in a string of kidnappings targeting engineers working on Iraq's infrastructure in a bid to undermine the U.S.-allied interim government. Eight other company employees, four Egyptians and four Iraqis, were seized outside of Baghdad on Wednesday.
More than 140 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq — some by anti-U.S. insurgents and others by criminals seeking ransoms. At least 26 of them have been killed, including two American civil engineers beheaded last week by the Tawhid and Jihad group headed by Jordanian terrorist Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.
Two senior officials of the Muslim Council of Britain were in Baghdad to try to win the freedom of Kenneth Bigley, a British civil engineer kidnapped Sept. 16 along with the two executed Americans, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley.
"We will do everything to contact them (the captors) while we are here," Daud Abdullah, assistant secretary-general of the British council, told reporters after talks at the British Embassy on Saturday.
He conceded, however, that his delegation had not arranged any meetings with Iraqi religious or political leaders and did not know whether they would be able to reach the kidnappers.
"The message is simple, it's a humanitarian one. ... He (Bigley) was a noncombatant, Islam does not endorse the capture of noncombatants, let alone the killing of them," Abdullah said.
A posting on an Islamic Internet site Saturday claimed al-Zarqawi's followers had killed Bigley, but the Foreign Office in London said the claim was not credible.
As the British delegation arrived, U.S. warplanes, tanks and artillery repeatedly hit at al-Zarqawi's terror network in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah west of Baghdad.
The strikes targeted two buildings where militants were allegedly meeting and a cluster of rebel-built fortifications used to mount attacks on nearby Marine positions, the U.S. military said. Doctors said 16 people were killed and 37 wounded in Saturday's attacks.
The two buildings were wrecked as explosions lit up the night sky before dawn Saturday, witnesses said. The Fallujah mosque switched on its loudspeakers, and clerics chanted prayers to rally the city's residents. Doctors said eight people were killed and 15 wounded.
Explosions rocked the city again after dark. Eight people were killed and 22 injured in the blasts, said Dr. Ahmed Khalil at Fallujah General Hospital. The U.S. military could not immediately be reached for comment on the blasts.
American troops have staged repeated attacks on sites the U.S. military describes as being used by al-Zarqawi's followers, but have not entered Fallujah since the end of a three-week siege in April that killed hundreds.
In other violence, an American soldier was reported killed by a bomb Saturday and the U.S. military said four Marines died in separate incidents Friday.
In Baghdad, gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying Iraqi National Guard applicants, killing six people, police said. It was the latest attack in a militant campaign that targets Iraqi security units and recruits.
Also Saturday, five mortar shells struck the Iraqi Oil Ministry in Baghdad, shattering windows and causing minor damage to the building, ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Someone's been tipping them off. That is why every time we bomb a terrorist leaders hideout, they are never there.
Cut his head off.
With or without thier support - Iraq must be pacified.
Then it MUST be used as a platform for an attack on the twin terrorist states of Syria and Iran.
This is a war to the finish - theirs or ours.
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