U.S., Iraqi Forces Trap Gunmen
U.S. and Iraqi forces trapped dozens of insurgents Wednesday during a two-hour gun battle at a police station south of Baghdad, a day after 100 masked gunmen stormed a jail near the Iranian border and freed more than 30 prisoners, most of them fellow insurgents.
Sixty gunmen, firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, attacked the Madain police station before dawn, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammadawi said.
U.S. troops and a special Iraqi police unit responded, catching the insurgents in crossfire and capturing 50 of the group, including a Syrian, al-Mohammadawi said.
Four police were killed, including the commander of the special unit. Five were wounded, al-Mohammadawi said. None of the attackers died.
Madain, 14 miles southeast of Baghdad, is at the northern tip of Iraq's Sunni-dominated "Triangle of Death," a region rife with sectarian violence, retaliatory kidnappings and killings in the underground conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.
In a highly publicized episode last April, there were reports Sunni militants had seized 100 Shiites and threatened to kill them unless all Shiites left the Madain area. Iraqi security forces swept into the region and found no hostages.
In the capital, roadside bombs that targeted police patrols wounded at least six policemen, including four who work as guards at the education ministry, police said. Gunmen in western Baghdad attacked a truck carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims returning from a religious commemoration in the city of Karbala, killing one, police said. Ten others were wounded.
In other developments:
In the Tuesday attack in Muqdadiyah, about 100 gunmen cut phone wires and fired rocket-propelled grenades in a daring operation that freed 18 fellow insurgents who had been captured in police raids just two days earlier.
Police said 15 other captives were sprung in the assault on the Muqdadiyah lockup. Twenty Iraqi security men and at least 10 insurgents were killed in the attack,
In an Internet posting Tuesday night the military wing of the Mujaheddin Shura Council, a militant Sunni Muslim insurgent group, purportedly claimed it carried out the operation. The Web posting said the group killed "40 policemen, liberated 33 prisoners and captured weapons." The claim was posted on the Iraqi News Web site and could not be independently verified.
With the telephone lines cut, the insurgents had 90 minutes to battle their way into the law enforcement compound before police reinforcements showed up from the nearby villages of Wajihiyah and Abu Saida, police said.
Muqdadiyah, on the eastern fringe of the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad, is about 25 miles from the Iranian frontier.
By the time the insurgents fled, taking away the bodies of many of their dead compatriots, nearly two dozen cars were shot up and set on fire and the jail was a charred mass of twisted bunk bed frames and smoldering mattresses.
U.S. helicopters were in the air above the jail after the insurgents had fled. Police said there was firing into the air by residents, but it was not clear if the American aircraft were the target. None was hit.
The insurgents whose incarceration apparently prompted the assault were detained Sunday during raids by security forces in the nearby villages of Sansal and Arab, police said.
Both U.S. and Iraqi military officials had said last year that the area was no longer an insurgent stronghold, but Tuesday's attack showed the militants still could assemble a large force, capable of operating in the region virtually at will.
The insurgency's strength, spiraling sectarian violence and the continuing stalemate over forming a government in Iraq have led politicians and foreign policy experts to say Iraq was on the brink or perhaps in the midst of civil war.