Security Incidents for 03/22/07

PHOTO: Shrook Jawar sits with her daughters at their makeshift home at former president Saddam Hussein's Republican guard barracks that were destroyed in the US bombing at the start of the invasion in 2003, in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, March 22, 2007. Some 150 families displaced by sectarian violence and war have taken refuge at the barracks. (AP Photo/Samir Mizban) [Other captions from this series says the families are from Fallujah. – dancewater]

Baghdad:

While returning to base after conducting combat security operations, a MND-B patrol was attacked with small arms fire in a western section of the Iraqi capital, killing one Soldier.

The Iraqi army killed 16 insurgents and arrested 198 others during the last 48 hours in different parts of Iraq, the Defence Ministry said.

U.S. forces freed three hostages and detained 13 suspected insurgents during operations in Baghdad, Garma, Mosul and Taji targeting al-Qaeda militants and foreign fighter facilitators, the U.S. military said.

U.S.-Iraqi joint forces detained 31 people on Wednesday for questioning during search operations in western Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

Three coincident blasts hit Ur neighborhood in eastern Baghdad on Thursday morning, one of them by an explosive charge, which injured at least four persons, eyewitnesses said. There was no immediate comment from the Iraqi police on the incident.

An Iraqi army soldier was killed and two others wounded when a parking car bomb went off near their vehicle while on patrol in Baghdad's western neighborhood of Amriyah, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

A civilian was also wounded in the same neighborhood (Amriyah) in a roadside bomb explosion, the source added.

In southern Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a funeral in the Doura district, killing a mourner and wounding two others.

Another roadside bomb detonated near a U.S. patrol in the capital's northern district of Sliekh. The U.S. military did not confirm the incident. The source could not say whether there was any casualty in the attack as the U.S. troops cordoned off the area preventing the Iraqi police from approaching the scene.

In central Baghdad, sporadic clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and unknown gunmen, the source said, adding that there is no immediate word on casualties as the area is sealed off by the U.S. and Iraqi troops.

A civilian was killed and three others were injured Thursday in fighting between Iraqi soldiers and militants in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Fadhil.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was unharmed as he ducked behind a podium after a rocket or mortar round landed near the prime minister's office Thursday while the two men were holding a news conference. Some chips of debris floated down from the ceiling above the U.N. chief after the explosion rattled the building in the Green Zone.

Diyala Prv:

In the volatile city of Baqouba, located northeast of Baghdad, the bullet-ridden body of a kidnapped local official was found dumped on a city street Thursday, one day after masked gunmen stormed her house and took her away handcuffed, police said.

Ilham Namik Shahin, 43, was a Shiite member of the Baqouba provincial council. Her brother, Najah Namik Shahin, said 10 gunmen stormed the family home Wednesday night, ordered everyone into the living room before they handcuffed his sister and left with her.

Basra:

Thursday, clashes erupted in the southern city of Basra between militiamen loyal to a anti-U.S. cleric and guards outside the headquarters of the rival Shiite Fadhila party, police said. The building caught fire and the guards fled, they said. There were no casualties. The clashes in Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, followed the arrest earlier Thursday of a Mahdi Army militiaman by policemen thought to be loyal to Fadhila. The arrested militiaman worked for the city's electricity company. His comrades retaliated by kidnapping a colleague of his known to be a Fadhila supporter, according to police. The fate of the two men is not known.

Also in Basra, police said gunmen on a motorcycle fatally shot a postgraduate female student at Basra University outside her home Wednesday night. Like most killings that take place daily in Iraq, the motive for Tuhfa Jaafar al-Bachay's murder is unknown.

British forces said they used "minimum force" to quell a disturbance at a British-run prison in Iraq, after an Iraqi official said five inmates were wounded by plastic bullets. Most of the detainees at the facility at Shuaiba logistics base near the southern city of Basra are suspected members of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia. Hakim al-Mayahi, who heads the Basra provincial council's security committee, said inmates at the facility rioted in the early hours of Thursday morning in protest against their detention without trial, some for up to two years. Details of the violence were sketchy, but Mayahi said guards fired plastic bullets to quell it. Five prisoners were wounded, he said, without giving the source of his information. British military spokesman Major David Gell said there had been a "minor disturbance" at the prison on Wednesday morning, not on Thursday, that had been quickly defused within an hour.

Police said the Mahdi militiamen fought Fadhila guards outside party headquarters, capturing eight before the building caught fire. Twelve Mahdi Army fighters were wounded, they said. Clashes also erupted near the residence of Basra's Fadhila governor, Mohammed al-Waeli, and continued into the afternoon, police said.

Kut:

In the latest episode of Shi’ite-Shi’ite violence, three mortar shells hit the headquarters of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). There were no casualties reported and they did not say who might have been behind the attack.

Dujailah:

About 2,000 angry mourners marched with the coffins of three Mahdi Army militiamen who were gunned down on Wednesday by unknown assailants.

Kirkuk:

Two civilians were killed in an attack by gunmen against a civilian car south of Kirkuk.

A civilian was killed and seven others wounded when an explosive device went off near a civilian vehicle in northern Kirkuk.

Mosul:

Iraqi police managed to defuse a booby-trapped car west of Mosul, a police source said.

Al Anbar Prv:

US Soldier killed on March 21, 2007 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province.

US Marine died March 21, 2007 wile conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province.

Additional:

The death of Lieutenant Colonel Peter E. Winston, 56, from Plant City, Florida was announced by the Dept of Defense yesterday. Winston died on November 13, 2006 in Kaiserslautern, Germany from a non-hostile unspecified cause that occurred while he was stationed in Iraq.

Thanks to whisker for the links above.

From Juan Cole’s Blog:

Early in the morning on Thursday, before dawn, some 200 Sunni Arab guerrillas in Muqdadiya (Diyala Province) stormed a jail and freed 33 prisoners, many of them guerrillas. I can't think of another recent operation that involved a company-sized fighting force. Thirty persons died in the fighting. One wire service reported, "Insurgents battled Iraqi and US reinforcements, set fire to the police station, courthouse and 20 police vehicles before making their escape." If they accomplished all that after US reinforcements arrived, imagine what they could have accomplished if no US and Iraqi troops had come out to confront them. [Embedded link did not work. – dancewater]