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U.S. Forces Arrest Former Iraqi Officer

Posted on: Monday, 22 December 2003, 06:00 CST

U.S. troops arrested a former Iraqi intelligence officer suspected of directing anti-American attacks and raided a Baghdad mosque overnight in a separate operation. U.S. soldiers also warned Monday that they'll jail black marketers of gasoline, some of whom are suspected of financing attacks.

On Sunday night, troops detained ex-army Gen. Mumtaz al-Taji at a house in Baqouba, about 30 miles north of Baghdad.

"Tonight we were on a mission to capture a former Iraqi intelligence service general who we believe is recruiting former military members of the Iraqi army to conduct attacks against U.S. forces," Maj. Paul Owen of the 588th Engineer Battalion told Associated Press Television News.

"He runs a very active cell in our sector and hopefully what we have done tonight is to stall some of his efforts," Owen said.

More than 30 soldiers took part in the raid, in which a rifle, pistol and ammunition were seized.

Al-Taji is not on the U.S. list of the 55 most wanted Iraqis. Thirteen fugitives from that list remain at large.

He is among hundreds of people detained in raids since Saddam Hussein was captured Dec. 13. Some raids have been based on intelligence gleaned from the arrest of the former dictator.

In southern Baghdad on Sunday, soldiers backed by helicopter gunships surrounded the Atika mosque, ordered everyone out and searched it until early Monday, a worker at the mosque told APTN.

He said troops used a blowtorch to break through a metal door into a secure area where they found one assault rifle. The mosque is used by Muslims of the Sunni tradition, a minority that dominated Iraq under Saddam, a Sunni.

In other towns, troops in tanks, Humvees and Bradley armored vehicles imposed curfews and roadblocks and went house to house, smashing through doors in the search for guerrillas and weapons.

Among targeted towns are Fallujah, a center of resistance west of Baghdad; Samarra, 75 miles north of Baghdad; Jalulah, northwest of the capital; and Rawah near the western border with Syria, where troops dubbed the raids "Operation Santa Claws."

In Samarra, a 70-year-old man died when U.S. troops put a bag over his head and prepared to detain him Sunday night, Iraqis said. Neighbors said Mehdi al-Jamal died of a heart attack.

One person was killed during an airborne raid Sunday in Jalulah, on the house of a sheik suspected of directing local resistance, said spokeswoman Maj. Josslyn Aberle of the 4th Infantry Division.

A 60-year-old woman was killed Sunday when soldiers blasted open the reinforced steel door of her home, said Lt. Col. Henry Kievenaar, who was directing the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in raids in Rawah.

Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff tied some of the recent detentions to Saddam's capture.

"Some of the information we gleaned when we picked up Saddam Hussein led to a better understanding of the structure of the resistance," he told the Fox News TV program on Sunday.

Saddam was arrested near his hometown of Tikrit, and the U.S. military has said soldiers also seized a briefcase containing documents that shed light on the anti-U.S. insurgency. The CIA is interrogating him in Iraq; Iraqi officials say the former dictator is in the Baghdad area.

"The only word I have is that he's not being cooperative," Myers said.

One American soldier has been killed in combat in the past week, raising the toll to 315 soldiers killed in combat since military operations began in March.

In Baghdad, the military put out flyers threatening to jail people who sell gasoline on the black market. The flyers cited new laws providing for confiscation of the goods, fines of double the value of the goods and jail sentences of three to 10 years.

Iraq is suffering severe fuel shortages caused by distribution problems, dilapidated equipment and sabotage by insurgents targeting the oil infrastructure in an apparent attempt to undermine the U.S.-led occupation.

In northeast Iraq on Monday, thousands of Kurds rallied in Kirkuk to demand that the oil-rich city be made part of an autonomous territory for Kurds, a Sunni Muslim minority who comprise 20 percent of Iraq's population of 25 million.

Kurds in Halabja, on the eastern border with Iran, held a similar rally and demanded that Saddam be sentenced to death for his crimes against them. In 1988, Iraqi armed forces attacked the town with lethal gas, killing thousands of civilians.

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