TAL AFAR, Iraq, 9 September 2005 — US and Iraqi forces have encircled the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar, and Iraqi authorities yesterday announced the arrest of 200 suspected insurgents there — most of them foreign fighters.
The Iraqi military said 150 of those arrested Wednesday in this town near the Syrian border were Arabs from Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Jordan.
The joint forces have reported heavy battles on the outskirts of the city and several deadly bombings that have mainly killed civilians. Iraqi authorities reported most of the civilian population had fled the city, which is 260 miles north of Baghdad and about 35 miles from the Syrian border.
“Our forces arrested 150 non-Iraqi Arabs yesterday in addition to 50 Iraqi terrorists with fake documents as they were trying to flee the city with the (civilian) families,” said Iraqi Army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed.
“We ordered the families to evacuate the Sunni neighborhood of Sarai, which is believed to be the main stronghold of the insurgents,” Ahmed said
Eight civilians were killed in the city Wednesday by a suicide car bomber at an Iraqi checkpoint, he said.
Tal Afar is 90 percent Turkmen, and 70 percent of them are Sunnis. After the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the United States installed a largely Shiite leadership in the city, including the mayor and much of the police force.
The Sunni majority has complained of oppression by the government and have turned to the insurgents — who are mainly Sunnis — for protection.
Early yesterday, a militant website carried a videotape showing the destruction of a US Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Tal Afar. The video, emblazoned with the logo of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, claimed the armored vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb.
The military issued no immediate response to the claim. The militant video did not say if there were casualties, although the force of the blast would suggest there had been. There were several large explosions of ordnance in the tank after the initial blast.
Twenty miles south of Baghdad, police yesterday reported finding 14 unidentified bodies near the farming town of Mahmoudiya. “All the bodies are in civilian clothes and have no identification documents,” said Lt. Adnan Abdullah of the Mahmoudiya police. They had been shot to death, he said.
Two more decomposing bodies, blindfolded and handcuffed, were found on the outskirts of Baghdad, near a sewage plant, police said.
Two Iraqis Killed in Rebel Attacks
Two Iraqis were killed and 11 others wounded yesterday in separate rebel attacks, including a car bomb targeting a convoy of a foreign personal security company, security sources said.
A security guard who worked protecting oil installations north of Baghdad was killed while seven others were wounded as a roadside bomb hit the car they were traveling in, police said.
In Tikrit, the hometown of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, 180 kilometers north of Baghdad, a lawyer was shot dead by gunmen outside his house, police said.
Two Iraqi civilians were injured as a car bomb exploded in central Baghdad targeting a convoy of a foreign security company, an Interior Ministry official said.
