BAGHDAD, 15 December 2004 — A cousin of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been captured in the flashpoint city of Fallujah where he was fighting with rebels, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said yesterday.
Ezzeddine Al-Majid was arrested in the city last week, Allawi told the interim National Assembly in Baghdad. “He is now in the hands of Iraqi security forces. There will be an inquiry and he will be judged.
“The members of the former regime, especially the hard core around Saddam Hussein, continue to do damage to Iraq and the Iraqis,” he added.
US-led troops killed hundreds of fighters during a massive assault in Fallujah last month, but have continued to face resistance in the flashpoint city that lies west of Baghdad. Majid, 44, was accused in July by US authorities of helping organize and arm the insurgency in Iraq, according to the New York Times.
Meanwhile, insurgents attacked an Iraqi police convoy traveling from the southern city of Basra to Baghdad yesterday killing at least four police officers, police sources said. The police were ambushed near the town of Salman Pak, about 30 km (20 miles) southeast of Baghdad, and between four and 10 of them were killed, a senior source said.
A bus they were traveling in and two cars marked Basra Police were destroyed, he said. Iraq’s Interior Ministry and the US military had no immediate information on any attack.
But Basra police confirmed that what they called a Tactical Support Unit had been ambushed south of Baghdad, although no officers from the Basra force itself were involved. The area around Salman Pak, site of a nuclear power plant and ammunition factories during Saddam Hussein’s regime, has been a focal point of guerrilla activity over the past year.
Towns to the west of Salman Pak, including Mahmudiya and Iskandariya, form part of what has been dubbed the “triangle of death”, where attacks by insurgents and bandits are routine.
Iraq’s police force is frequently targeted by insurgents, particularly when lightly armed units are being moved from one part of the country to another or are returning from training.
But insurgents have had more success in other parts of the country, attacking police stations in Baghdad and Mosul in recent weeks and overrunning them and looting them of weapons. In Mosul, three-quarters of the police force have deserted.
Meanwhile, Iraqis who lost loved ones during Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule rushed yesterday to a site in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq that Allawi said was a mass grave containing some 500 bodies.
They went to the site at a village near the city of Sulaimaniyah after building workers noticed human skulls and torn clothes as they were digging.
— With input from agencies
