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Armed Group Kidnaps 31 Iraqi Policemen

Posted on: Wednesday, 17 November 2004, 12:00 CST

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An armed group kidnapped 31 Iraqi policemen who were returning training in Jordan, authorities said Wednesday, and a suicide car bomber rammed a U.S. convoy north of Baghdad, killing 10 people, hospital officials said.

The attacks were part of a wave of violence that has swept across Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland during the U.S. offensive to retake the insurgent bastion of Fallujah. The violence has made November one of the bloodiest months of the Iraqi insurgency.

The American death toll in the war in Iraq surpassed 1,200 with new Defense Department identifications Tuesday night and Wednesday. The total of 1,206 deaths included 1,202 identified members of the U.S. military, three military civilians and one unidentified soldier reported to have died Tuesday in Balad.

The police officers were abducted Sunday, when gunmen stormed the hotel the officers were staying at in the town of Rutba, near the Jordanian border, said a police spokesman in the city of Karbala, south of Baghdad.

A Karbala policeman returning from Rutba said around 20 armed men attacked the hotel, covering the captives' heads with black bags and tying their hands before dragging them away, the spokesman said.

The gunmen took the mobile phones, cameras and documents from the unarmed policemen, the officer recounted to the spokesman. The officer himself said he was beaten but not kidnapped by the gunmen.

Most of the policemen were from Diyala province, which lies north and east of Baghdad, the spokesman said.

Insurgents have repeatedly targeted new members of the Iraqi security forces that the U.S. military has been training. On Oct. 23, gunmen ambushed a group of Iraqi soldiers returning home from a training course on a road east of Baghdad. Around 50 of the soldiers - who were unarmed - were killed execution-style with gunshots to the back of the head.

On Oct. 16, nine Iraqi policemen returning from a training course in Jordan were ambushed and killed on their way home to Karbala.

The car bomb came during clashes in Beiji, a city 155 miles north of the capital, witnesses said. The vehicle hit a convoy and exploded, then U.S. soldiers opened fire.

Ten people were killed in the blast and nine others wounded, hospital officials said. The 1st Infantry Division said three U.S. soldiers were wounded in the suicide attack. Beiji is the site of Iraq's largest oil refinery and a major power station.

In Fallujah, heavy machine-gun fire and explosions rang out in south-central parts of Fallujah as U.S. Marines hunted fighters still in the turbulent city. In the northern Jolan neighborhood, U.S. Marines fought insurgents who officers said had sneaked back into the city by swimming across the Euphrates River.

Bullets snapped overhead as Iraqi body-collection workers supervised by the Marines sought cover behind walls and in buildings. After 15 minutes of fighting, three insurgents were dead and one Marine was slightly injured in the hand, officers said.

The rush of warplanes streaking through the low-lying clouds shook the city and blasts sent smoke into the sky. The U.S. military said that airstrikes Wednesday were concentrated in southwestern Fallujah, destroying enemy positions.

On Saturday, the U.S. military had declared the one-time rebel stronghold completely occupied but not subdued after a nearly weeklong battle. But pockets of insurgents remain, and U.S. and Iraqi forces are still fighting.

"Even as we start Fallujah's reconstruction, the fighting is continuing, as you can hear," Capt. Alex Henegar, a civil affairs officer attached to the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, said as heavy gunfire and grenade explosions sounded in the distance.

Four trucks of humanitarian aid for Fallujah crossed the borders from Kuwait into Iraq on Wednesday, said Dr. Haitham Issa, chairman of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society in Basra. The assistance included food, medicine and bedcovers.

Fallujah residents who fled to neighboring Ramadi reported that local insurgent leaders Abdullah al-Janabi and Omar Hadid remained fighting inside the city.

Fihgting continued elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle, where insurgents have been most active. In Ramadi, masked men clutching rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles took up positions on several streets and alleys in eastern and southeastern Ramadi, residents said.

South of Baghdad, a roadside bomb detonated Wednesday near an Iraqi National Guard convoy in the insurgent hotspot of Iskandariyah, killing two guardsmen and wounding three, police and hospital officials said.

Insurgents attacked police headquarters late Tuesday in Baqouba, north of Baghdad, then hit it again Wednesday with a mortar, although no casualties were reported, police said. Fighting in the city a day earlier killed at least insurgents, the military said. One Iraqi policeman and seven civilians were also killed.

Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S. Marines, freed a captive Iraqi truck driver during a raid south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The rescued hostage, who was not identified, was taken to a nearby U.S. base, where he was treated and released.

In Baghdad, some 3,000 protesters peacefully demanded the release of seven followers of Shiite Ayatollah Mahmoud al-Hassani, who had been detained by U.S. forces in the past week.

The northern city of Mosul, where insurgents launched an uprising last week, appeared calmer, the military said Wednesday, after a U.S. assault to restore control. On a handful of small arms attacks continued, the military said.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said it was expanding its investigation into the fatal shooting of a wounded man by a Marine in a Fallujah mosque over the weekend. The investigation will also look into whether other wounded men in the mosque were also shot and killed, a spokesman said.

The probe was prompted by videotaped pool pictures by NBC that showed the shooting during an operation of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment in the mosque on Saturday.

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is "very concerned" about the shooting, his office said. American and Iraqi authorities have been trying to stem outrage over the shootings among Iraqis, particularly the Sunni Arab minority, and Arabs across the region. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte expressed regret over the shooting but said it should not undermine U.S. efforts to remove guerrillas from the city.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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