/ 5 August 2006

Insurgents held as violence continues in Iraq

Iraqi soldiers arrested 64 suspected insurgents, mostly in northern provinces, as three people were killed in the country's raging sectarian and political violence, officials said on Saturday. In the latest violence, Hassan Wannas, a former member of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, was killed in a drive-by shooting on Saturday.

Iraqi soldiers arrested 64 suspected insurgents, mostly in northern provinces, as three people were killed in the country’s raging sectarian and political violence, officials said on Saturday.

A defence ministry statement said 40 suspected insurgents — a reference to Sunni militants fighting the United States-backed government and US troops — were captured in northern Iraq since Friday.

Another 22 were held in Ramadi and two in Baghdad, which are part of the so-called Sunni Triangle where the insurgency has been at its worst. The statement gave no other details.

Meanwhile, a US military statement said a soldier assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force died on Saturday ”due to non-hostile action” in Anbar province, west of Baghdad. It did not provide details.

At least 2 587 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to oust Saddam Hussein, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2 050 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.

In the latest violence, Hassan Wannas, a former member of Saddam’s Ba’ath Party, was killed in a drive-by shooting on Saturday, while standing in front of his home in Diwaniyah, 130km south of Baghdad, police First Lieutenant Raed Jabir said.

Meanwhile, gunmen shot dead a bodyguard of a senior official of the justice ministry after breaking into his house on Friday night in western Baghdad said police Captain Jamil Hussein.

In Samarra, 95km north of Baghdad, a police commando was killed and three others injured when a roadside bomb went off late on Friday next to their patrol, police First Lieutenant Ali Ahmed said. Also in Samarra, a roadside bomb exploded on Saturday near an American convoy but no casualties were reported.

Dozens of people are killed almost every day in Iraq, mostly in the sectarian violence between Shi’ite and Sunni extremists. At least 43 deaths were reported Friday, including 10 killed on Thursday at a soccer game hit by a suicide bombing.

The sectarian violence, which had been on the rise even as anti-US insurgency was waning, escalated after the February 22 bombing of a Shi’ite shrine in Samarra unleashed a wave of reprisal attacks on Sunnis nationwide.

On Thursday, two top US generals told a Senate committee that Iraq is in danger of sliding into civil war if the sectarian violence, largely visible in Baghdad, is not contained. — Sapa-AP