BAGHDAD, 19 June 2005 — The US military said yesterday it killed about 50 insurgents since the start of another joint US-Iraqi operation against rebels in Iraq’s western Al-Anbar province near the Syrian border. In Washington, the Senate approved Zalmay Khalilzad, formerly US ambassador to Afghanistan, as the new envoy to Iraq.

Fighting raged for the second day yesterday in Karabilah, near Iraq’s border with Syria, as US Marines and Iraqi soldiers swept through the area in search of insurgents and weapons. “Approximately 50 insurgents have been killed since the operation began yesterday morning,” said a military statement.

“There have been no additional reports of military or civilian casualties as a result of the operation.” Operation Spear was launched Friday morning.

In a chilling discovery, troops found four Iraqi hostages who had been beaten, handcuffed and chained to a wall in a bunker in the town, US Captain Jeff Pool said. “The operations’ objectives, to root out insurgent and foreign terrorist presence within the city and deny them the use of Karabilah as a sanctuary, are similar to Operation Matador conducted by Marines May 7-14,” he said.

But unlike Matador, he said the 1,000-strong operation has more Iraqis taking part. Iraqi soldiers from the 1st Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Brigade were involved he added without giving exact figures. A mix of insurgents loyal to former President Saddam Hussein and foreign fighters are believed holed up in Al-Anbar, a broad swath across western Iraq.

According to the US military, insurgents cross into the country from Syria along its porous and desolate border, where US Marine airstrikes killed about 40 people on June 11. Operation Spear is the third major US sweep in the region since the beginning of the year and the massive assault on the former rebel bastion of Fallujah in November.

Previous offensives killed at least 100 insurgents, including some linked to Iraq’s most wanted man Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda leader in the country, the US military said. Hundreds more were arrested. But as the noose was tightened on insurgents around Karabilah, they struck elsewhere in Anbar

In Fallujah, where rebels still operate, a suicide car bomber killed five Iraqis, including three soldiers, in a strike against an Iraqi army convoy Friday afternoon, the US military said.

Ten others were wounded in the attack west of the capital, including six soldiers. In nearby Habbaniya, four Iraqis were killed Friday and 15 wounded when a car bomb exploded near a mosque, the military said.

Despite the violence, US military and Iraqi officials believe they are dealing death blows to Zarqawi’s organization of Al-Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers, believed to be behind some of the worst attacks and hostage-takings. Around 21 major players in Zarqawi’s group have been killed or captured in the past several months, US Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan said.

In fresh violence in Baghdad yesterday, six Iraqi soldiers and two civilians were wounded in an attack against a joint US-Iraqi convoy in the western Al-Bayaa neighborhood, Iraqi security and hospital sources said. Earlier, in the nearby neighborhood of Al-Jihad, a roadside bomb that was meant to strike a passing police convoy wounded two civilians, the same sources said.

Brig. Gen. Mundher Al-Bayati, a doctor in the former army of Saddam, was gunned down when he answered his door, said an interior ministry source. And gunmen opened fire on a US-Iraqi convoy near Baquba, north of Baghdad, wounding four police, the Iraqi army said.

In Washington, newly approved Ambassador Khalilzad prepared to lead the largest US Embassy in the world, with a staff of some 1,160.

An Arabic speaker and Muslim who was born in Afghanistan, Khalilzad has served in various capacities in the US Departments of State and Defense, as well as with the National Security Council, and in academia.

He has vowed to help restore stability and security to Iraq and said recently that failure in the violence-plagued country was not an option amid increasing calls in Washington for the pullout of some of the 140,000 US soldiers stationed in Iraq.

According to the latest Pentagon figures, 1,707 US military personnel have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.