Tuesday, March 08, 2005:
BAGHDAD - A high-ranking official with the interior ministry in Iraq was gunned down in broad daylight outside his home in Baghdad on Tuesday, a security source said.
"Major General Ghazi Mohammed Issa, the deputy director of the interior ministry's naturalisation department, was killed outside his home at 8 am (0500 GMT) by masked gunmen in a car," Sabah Kadhim, a senior advisor at the ministry, told AFP.
Issa, an expert on naturalisation, was due to leave Tuesday for Iran to vet Iraqi refugees expelled from under Saddam Hussein's old regime who now wished to return home, Kadhim said.
More than 1,300 police and members of the national guard have been killed by rebels since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
03/08/2005 11:37 GMT
AFP and Turkish Press
March 08, 2005:
From the AFP via The Australian :
In the restive northern city of Mosul, two suspected insurgents were killed and two wounded during a raid by US troops in search of weapons yesterday, a military statement said, adding that two "extremely large" caches were seized.
The arms caches included 200,000 rounds of ammunition, over 950 mortar rounds and over 1850 pounds of explosives, it said.
US soldiers repelled an attack in Dujail, east of Baquba, yesterday killing two insurgents and detaining five, said a statement.
In Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar province, new Iraqi commandos conducted a raid on a hospital today "to investigate possible insurgent activity taking place on the premises," said a US military statement.
A car bomb was detonated near a US-Iraqi security checkpoint yesterday in eastern Ramadi, said another statement without giving further details or saying if there were any casualties.