Iraqi forces arrest local al-Qaida leader
Iraqi security forces today said they have arrested the head of an al-Qaida cell in a western Iraqi city, as the US military announced the deaths of two soldiers and a Marine.
Acting on a tip-off, soldiers descended on a building in the city of Rawah, 175 miles north-west of Baghdad, where they arrested local al Qaida commander Abu Muhayyam al-Masri, whose name is a pseudonym meaning, “the Egyptian,” a Defence Ministry official said.
Aides Abu Issam al-Libi, or “the Libyan,” and Abu Zaid al-Suri, “the Syrian,” were also arrested among nine other members of the cell.
The official said al-Suri confessed to being responsible for organising at least one suicide bombing in Baghdad. He said the raid also netted a large quantity of weapons.
Rawah lies deep in Anbar province, where Sunni Arab insurgents routinely launch deadly attacks on US and Iraqi forces that show no sign of diminishing in numbers or intensity, more than three years after the US invasion.
State television, meanwhile, said the speaker of Iraq’s parliament, Mahmoud al-Mash’hadani, was to travel to neighbouring Iran today to attend a conference of Asian parliamentarians.
Iraqiya TV didn’t say when al-Mash’hadani was due to arrive in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
The US military said two American soldiers assigned to the 89th Military Police Brigade died when the vehicle they were travelling in was hit by a roadside bomb yesterday in western Baghdad. It said another soldier was wounded in the incident, but gave no details about those injuries.
The latest casualties bring the death toll among American forces in Iraq this month to 23 – at least 11 of them killed in Anbar province. Most others died in the Baghdad area.
A least 2,843 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.
