5 Iraqi Officers Slain in Central Iraq

By RAVI NESSMAN

BAGHDAD – Five Iraqi police officers were shot, killed and dumped in a deserted field in central Iraq, and U.S. forces thwarted a potentially devastating bombing attack in Baghdad, the police and military said Saturday.

The bullet-riddled bodies of the five police officers, who were dressed in civilian clothes, were discovered late Friday outside the city of Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, police said.

Their ID documents showed they were from the turbulent city of Ramadi, police said, and their killing underscored the danger facing Iraqi police in the area, where insurgents routinely target Iraqis seen to be working with the U.S.-led military forces.

In southern Baghdad, U.S. soldiers on a routine patrol Friday searched a suspicious blue tanker truck and discovered it had been converted into a large truck bomb, the military said.

The explosive on the truck consisted of 14 155 mm artillery shells and was destroyed by a team of sappers, the military said Saturday.

In an effort to prevent further attacks on troops, U.S.-led forces arrested suspected Shiite militants accused of smuggling powerful bomb components from Iran during a raid Friday in Baghdad’s teeming Shiite district of Sadr City.

A U.S. military statement said the militants were part of a "secret cell" that smuggles powerful bombs known as "explosively formed penetrators," or EFPs, from Iran and sends Shiite fighters from Iraq for training in Iran.

U.S. and some Iraqi officials suspect the Iranians may be stoking a growing power struggle among Shiite factions and political parties – despite the Tehran government’s insistence that it is working to help bring stability to its neighbor Iraq.

Meanwhile, clashes broke out Friday in Baghdad and in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf when police said gunmen from the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, attacked offices of the rival Supreme Council for the Islamic Republic in Iraq, or SCIRI, a key member of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government but with strong ties to Tehran.

Tensions rose after a key Sadr aide, Abdul-Hussein al-Obeidi, was stopped at an Iraqi police checkpoint and prevented from driving into Najaf’s old quarter.

The historic district – which houses the shrine of the main Shiite saint Imam Ali and the homes of several top Shiite clerics – has long been under a driving ban for private vehicles, but al-Obeidi told reporters that he had a permit allowing him to enter.

Al-Obeidi said he was held at the checkpoint for up to 30 minutes with his family in the car, then was stopped as he tried to go through another checkpoint. He complained that police fired in the air as he argued with them, shooting one his car’s tires.

"They yelled at me and spoke to me in an inappropriate fashion," al-Obeidi said.

Security forces in Najaf are known to be mostly drawn from SCIRI supporters.

Four people were injured in the clashes Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, prompting local authorities to impose a curfew. The clash in Baghdad occurred when Mahdi gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at a SCIRI office in the Habibiya district, injuring two guards, police said.

In Diwaniyah, a Shiite city 80 miles south of Baghdad, suspected Shiite gunmen attacked a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol late Friday, killing one Iraqi soldier and wounding four civilians, police said.

It was unclear what provoked the attacks, but they appeared to be part of an escalating power struggle brewing throughout the dominant Shiite community, which intensified after Britain announced plans to draw down its troops in the mostly Shiite south.

Shiite parties are trying to oust the Shiite governor of oil-rich Basra province, and violence has broken out recently in Kut and other Shiite cities.

Some Mahdi Army members in Sadr City have said a pro-Iranian faction has been sending fighters to Iran for training. The members spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears for their own safety.

In another sign of unrest, hundreds of angry Shiites poured onto the streets of Najaf and Basra to protest what they considered insults by Al-Jazeera television against Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

The protesters were angered by an Al-Jazeera talk show this week in which the host, Egyptian Ahmed Mansour, questioned al-Sistani’s leadership credentials and whether he authored his own religious edicts.

Unrest in Shiite areas adds a new, dangerous dimension to the challenge facing U.S. forces as they try to restore order in the capital during the 11-week Baghdad security operation.

U.S. officials maintain that sectarian killings in the capital have declined since the Baghdad crackdown was launched Feb. 14, in large part because Shiite militias assumed a low profile to avoid a confrontation with the Americans.

But attacks using EFPs, the signature weapon of Shiite militias, are on the rise.

Last month, the number of EFP attacks against American forces hit a monthly high of 69, U.S. officials said. And April was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since December with 104 deaths, although it was unclear how many were a result of EFPs.

The increase in attacks using EFPs, which the U.S. says come from Iran, suggest that the Shiite extremists may be shifting tactics, reducing their slaughter of Sunni civilians but focusing more on U.S. and Iraqi forces.

This week, extremists launched at least three rocket or mortar attacks against the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, killing four Asian contractors. Those attacks appeared to have come from areas where Shiite militias operate.

It was unclear whether Iranian weapons were responsible for the latest U.S. deaths.