BAGHDAD, 7 August 2006 — The Iraqi Army said yesterday that it detained 37 individuals suspected of involvement in attacks in the suburbs and villages surrounding Ramadi, 110 kilometers west of Baghdad.
The army also said it defused an explosive device near the city and stepped up security by increasing patrols and checkpoints.
In a separate incident, the head of the prisoners organization in Diwaniyah, 200 kilometers south of Baghdad, was shot dead by gunmen, a security source said yesterday.
Ali Ali Hussein was leaving his office Saturday night when he was ambushed by gunmen and killed, the source said. Diwaniyah is witnessing a wave of violence and killings that has left dead public figures, scientists and members of the former Baath party, the source added.
The US military in a statement released yesterday reported that US- led coalition forces seized a large cache of explosives and captured four suspected terrorists in Adhamiyah district of Baghdad in a predawn raid Friday.
In Baghdad, the US military in Iraq began stepping up its presence over the weekend with residents yesterday saying they had caught sight in the west of the city of wheeled tanks previously only used by US forces in northern Iraq.
Some 3,700 US soldiers, whose tour of duty in the area around the northern city of Mosul was due to end soon, are to remain on in Iraq for an extra four months and be transferred to Baghdad. At the moment there are about 9,000 US troops stationed in the greater Baghdad area.
The deployment of extra troops to Baghdad, which was announced by US President George W Bush during a visit by Iraq Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki to Washington on July 25, is designed to improve the deteriorating security situation in the city.
Insurgents, sectarian “death squads” and criminal gangs have contributed to the descent of the city into bloody chaos. The Stryker tanks that have appeared on the Baghdad landscape are unusual because the underpart of the chassis is surrounded by a cage-like grid. This innovation is designed to better protect the vehicle from home-made bombs regularly planted by insurgents at the side of the road. Four Iraqis, two civilians and two soldiers, were killed in such an attack on an Iraqi army convoy in Mahmudiya, 35 kilometers south of Baghdad, on Saturday. The US military already has taken several hits in the past week in the western province of Anbar, where at least 15 US soldiers were killed over the past 10 days, mostly fighting insurgents.
Units of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team deployed in flash point districts in the west of the capital, which in recent weeks has seen hundreds of civilians murdered by sectarian death squads.
As they arrived, the blasts of two roadside bombs echoed around the city and security forces recovered 20 corpses across Baghdad - four Iraqi soldiers and 16 civilians who had been tortured and shot dead, police said.
One bomb wounded two Iraqi police commandos and two civilians in the Jihad neighborhood, an interior ministry official said.
“The Stryker Brigade continues to move, and its final positions are still being worked out,” said US military spokesman Maj. William Willhoite.
Last week, the US general heading Middle East operations warned that Baghdad’s descent into chaos could sabotage efforts to rebuild a stable Iraq, more than three years after former President Saddam Hussein was toppled.
“I believe the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that, if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war,” said Gen. John Abizaid, head of US Central Command.
The Stryker Brigade had already completed 12 months in the restive region around the northern city of Mosul, and had begun to head home to Alaska when they were ordered to Baghdad for the next 120 days.
Violence also continued around Iraq yesterday. Three insurgents were killed near Kirkuk when explosives in their car exploded accidentally, police said. A joint raid by US and Iraqi forces netted 15 “terrorists” north of Kirkuk, a security source said.
And in the southern town of Nasiriyah, a former member of Saddam’s Baath Party was shot dead, police said. Nevertheless, a coalition spokesman said Iraqi forces in Nasiriyah were ready to take full charge of security in Dhi Qar Province.
