BAGHDAD, 11 August 2005 — Gunmen kidnapped a senior Interior Ministry official in the heart of the Iraqi capital yesterday and the US military reported that five more American soldiers had been killed. Iraqi politicians intensified talks to try to meet a deadline for finalizing a constitution.
Brig. Gen. Khudayer Abbas, chief of the administrative affairs office in the Interior Ministry, was dragged from his vehicle on central Baghdad’s Andalus Square and spirited away in another car, according to police Maj. Abbas Mohammed Salman.
No group claimed responsibility. The Interior Ministry supervises police and elite paramilitary units which are at the forefront of the fight against the insurgents.
Four US soldiers were killed shortly before midnight Tuesday when insurgents attacked their 10-member patrol as it was investigating explosions near Beiji, 250 kilometers north of Baghdad, the US command said.
A fifth American soldier assigned to the 2nd Marine Division was killed Tuesday by small arms fire near Habaniyah, 80 kilometers west of Baghdad, the US military said yesterday.
The Beiji attack was launched when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb, then poured rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire on the beleaguered American unit, the US command said. Five soldiers and a US civilian contractor were wounded.
Late yesterday, five Iraqi soldiers were killed and two were wounded when insurgents attacked a checkpoint south of Beiji.
Gunmen also killed police Capt. Mahmoud Hassan in Baghdad’s western Bayaa district, police said. Names of the US soldiers killed in Beiji were not released. However, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania National Guard, Capt. Cory P. Angell, said a Guard unit suffered casualties that included dead and wounded during an attack in Beiji.
Elsewhere, five US soldiers were slightly injured when a car bomb exploded in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliyah. Four civilians and three police were killed, according to 1st Lt. Tahir Mahmoud.
In western Iraq, the US Marines announced the end of a weeklong offensive in the Euphrates Valley codenamed Operation Quick Strike. Twenty Marines were killed last week as Operation Quick Strike got under way.
They included six Marine snipers who were killed Aug. 1 near Haditha. Two days later, 14 Marines and a civilian translator died when their armored vehicle was hit by a massive blast. Marines said nine car bombs were discovered during the sweep, the latest in a series of operations aimed at curbing insurgent activity in the volatile Euphrates Valley — a major infiltration route for foreign fighters from Syria.
“This is another operation, similar to those conducted before, that has disrupted the insurgents’ ability to operate freely” in the area, Col. Stephen W. Davis said.
With the death toll rising, the Bush administration is hoping that political progress will in time take the steam out of the Sunni-led rebellion and enable the United States and its international partners to begin withdrawing troops next year.
Key to that strategy is a democratic constitution followed by elections in December. Iraq’s Parliament is to approve the draft charter by Monday, however major differences among the political, ethnic and political factions threatened to delay completion of the document.
