World

Iraqi Forces Detain 77 In Crackdown

August 19, 2006 / 10:31 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Unidentified gunmen attacked Friday a convoy of civilian trucks, killing one guard, as a cache of arms was seized in a Baghdad mosque, officials said. Security forces detained 77 people across Iraq in a crackdown on sectarian and political extremists.

The convoy carrying unspecified goods had just left Baghdad for the northern city of Irbil when it came under attack in Taji, 12 miles north of the capital, said police Lt. Ahmed Al-Qaisi.

He said one guard riding alongside in an SUV was killed and one guard was injured.

Also Friday, Iraqi police found five bodies with gunshot wounds in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, and a roadside bomb killed one person in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad.

A statement by the General Command of the Armed Forces said Iraqi soldiers raided the Al-Sediq Sunni mosque in Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood on a tip off and confiscated mortar shells, a belt of explosives likely to be used by a suicide bomber, 27 wire communications sets, rocket propelled grenade launchers and magazines of bullets.

Ghazaliyah, a predominantly Sunni area, is one of the most volatile neighborhoods of Baghdad targeted by Iraqi and U.S. forces in a new security crackdown in an effort to stem the sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites.

Some 12,000 additional U.S. and Iraqi forces have been sent to Baghdad to enforce peace in the capital.

The tit-for-tat attacks between the two communities since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite mosque has raised fears of an all-out civil war, and diverted resources needed to fight the Sunni insurgency by loyalists of Saddam Hussein grinding on for the last three years.

In other developments:

The New York Times reports that U.S Marines being investigated in the killings of two dozen mostly civilian Iraqis in Haditha last fall appear to have destroyed or withheld evidence. The newspaper says pages are missing from an official company logbook of the unit involved in the deaths. The newspaper also reports that an incriminating video was not turned over to investigators until a top commander asked for it.

Jordanian diplomat Ahmed al-Lozi has presented his credentials to the Iraqi government, becoming the first fully accredited Arab ambassador in the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein, an official said Friday.

An Iraqi journalist working for a newspaper affiliated to a minority Turkoman party has been kidnapped in western Baghdad, an official said Friday. Saif Abdul-Jabbar al-Tamimi of the al-Akhaa, or Brotherhood, newspaper was abducted by unidentified persons on Wednesday in al-Adil, a predominantly Sunni neighborhood, said army Maj. Raed Salman Abdul-Wahid. There has been no claim of responsibility, he said.

An Iraqi tribunal is incapable of fairly and effectively trying Saddam Hussein and six others on genocide charges for their role in the killing of an estimated 100,000 Kurds in the 1980s, Human Rights Watch said Friday. The organization said in a statement that the judges and lawyers of the Iraqi High Tribunal do not understand international law, and urged the court to "improve its practices if it is to do justice" in the trial that starts Monday.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says he found during a recent trip to Iraq that U.S. troops are increasingly worried over the slow progress being made.

Iraq has doubled the money allocated for importing oil products in August and September to tackle the country's worst fuel shortage since Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster, a senior Iraqi official said Thursday.

American journalist Jill Carroll is talking publicly for the first time about being held hostage in Iraq for 82 days. On Friday, she recalls her captors' DVD collection.

Friday's statement did not say if any arrests were made at the mosque, but listed the results of the nationwide crackdown: 77 detained in the last 24 hours including 31 people with strong evidence of terrorist activities against them.

It said the 31 included four Iraqis who were caught planting a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, five Egyptians and a man who had obtained a security clearance pass for the highly protected Green Zone, an enclosed area in Baghdad containing government headquarters and the U.S. facilities.

The security operation follows a sharp spike in violence in the country -- about 3,500 Iraqis were killed in July in sectarian or political violence nationwide, the highest monthly toll for civilians since the war started in March 2003.

On Thursday, U.S. officials confirmed that 2,625 roadside bombs, directed mostly against American or Iraqi forces, exploded or were discovered before detonation in July -- a sharp rise compared to 1,454 bombs in January.

The figures suggest that the Sunni Arab insurgency is gaining strength despite setbacks, including the June 7 death of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in a U.S. airstrike northeast of Baghdad.