World

Iraqi Official Gunned Down

May 23, 2005 / 8:34 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Two carloads of gunmen assassinated a top national security official and his driver in a drive-by shooting on Monday, police said.

Maj. Gen. Wael al-Rubaei and his driver were attacked in central Baghdad's Mansour district as they were heading to work, said police Lt. Majid Zaki.

Al-Rubaei was the director of the National Security Ministry's operations room, according to a government statement. Government officials and police contacted by telephone earlier had identified him as an aide in the Iraqi prime minister's Cabinet.

The killing came a day after another senior government official, Trade Ministry auditing office chief Ali Moussa, was shot dead — part of an ongoing terror campaign that has killed more than 550 people in less than one month.

Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops detained almost 300 suspected insurgents overnight in the largest joint U.S.-Iraqi military offensive to date, the military said Monday.

The Baghdad offensive, dubbed Operation Squeeze Play, came as the American military announced that five U.S. soldiers were killed in northern Iraq on Sunday — four in separate roadside bomb attacks and one in a vehicle accident.

In other developments:

A car bomb detonated Monday outside a popular restaurant in northern Baghdad, killing and injuring an undetermined number of people, eyewitnesses said. The bomb exploded at lunchtime outside the Habayibna restaurant. Several cars parked on the street were ablaze and bodies could be seen on the street. No other details were immediately available.

A suicide bomber killed five people and injured 13 when he drove an explosives-packed pickup truck into a crowd of people outside a municipal council office in Tuz Khormato, 50 miles south of the northern city of Kirkuk, said police commander Lt. Gen. Sarhat Qader.

In the former insurgent stronghold of Samarra 60 miles north of Baghdad, three suicide bombers tried to attack an American military base, injuring three U.S. soldiers, the military said.

Three Romanian journalists were expected to return home Monday. They and their Iraqi-American guide were released after being held captive for nearly two months.

Iraqi security forces captured Ismail Budair Ibrahim al-Obeidi, a "terrorist" close to the network of the Jordan-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, a government statement said. The terror suspect, also known as Abu Omar, planned car bomb attacks in Baghdad and rigged booby-trapped cars for foreign fighters, the statement said.

The U.S. military announced that three soldiers were killed Sunday and one was injured in two separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul. No details were released. Two other soldiers were killed in separate incidents on Sunday, the first when his patrol was attacked with a car bomb just north of Tikrit. The other was killed in a vehicle accident near Kirkuk. As of Monday, May 22, 2005, at least 1,634 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Operation Squeeze Play, which began Sunday and was apparently winding down on Monday, was centered on western Baghdad's Abu Ghraib district and targeted militants suspected of attacking the U.S. detention facility there and the road linking downtown to the international airport, the military said in a statement.

"This is the largest combined operation with Iraqi security forces to date," said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Clifford Kent. "The Iraqi Security Forces have the lead in this operation while we perform shaping and supporting roles."

Seven Iraqi battalions backed by U.S. forces launched the offensive in the capital in an effort to stanch the violence that has killed more than 550 people in less than a month, targeting insurgents who have attacked the dangerous road to Baghdad's airport and Abu Ghraib prison.

"Iraqi army and ministry of interior forces worked very well together and demonstrated good, solid fundamental skills today," said Col. Mark A. Milley, commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division.

Aides to a radical anti-American Shiite cleric, meanwhile, sought to defuse tension between Sunnis and the majority Shiites after a recent series of sectarian killings. Sunnis are believed to make up the bulk of Iraq's raging insurgency.

Iraq's government took the diplomatic offensive, joining the United States in its oft-repeated demands that Syria close its porous border to foreign fighters.

Parliament was also expected to debate the release of Ghazi Hammud al-Obeidi, 65, one of the most-wanted officials from Saddam Hussein's former regime. Al-Obeidi was released last month apparently because he was purportedly terminally ill with stomach cancer.

In charging Syria with failing to stop the influx of foreign fighters, Baghdad was restating a routine U.S. complaint.

"It is impossible for about 2,000 people coming from the Gulf to pass through Syria and cross from Qaim or other border points without being discovered, despite our repeated calls," government spokesman Laith Kuba said at a news conference.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said during a trip to Turkey last week that he would soon visit Syria to discuss the issue of foreign infiltration.

Syria has been coming under pressure to stop foreign fighters infiltrating into Iraq, where violence has drastically increased since the April 28 announcement of al-Jaafari's Shiite-led government. Syria has always denied the charges.

Senior aides of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr met a key Sunnis group Sunday in a bid to soothe tensions that have flared and resulted in the death of 10 Shiite and Sunni clerics in the past two weeks.

The association's leader, Harith al-Dhari, last week pinned the killing of several Sunnis, including clerics, on the Badr Brigades, the military wing of Iraq's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The militia denied the charge and accused the Sunni association of trying to start a civil war.

Al-Sadr, said in a television interview aired Sunday the talks were aimed at settling the feud between the association and the Badr Bridges. He resurfaced this week after lying low following fierce battles last year in the southern holy city of Najaf and Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City between his supporters and U.S. forces.