Insurgents Target Iraqi and U.S. Forces
03/24/2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Insurgents kept up their campaign Thursday against Iraqi security forces and U.S. troops, targeting Americans with roadside bombs in the north and attacking Iraq’s nascent army in the capital.
Two separate explosives planted in the streets of the northern city of Mosul detonated near U.S. patrols, according to witnesses, who said they didn’t believe there were any casualties.
One blast near a Mosul school caused panicked children to pile out of the building, said Khairy Ilham, a shopkeeper who witnessed the blast. The U.S. military wasn’t immediately available for comment.
In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a two-ton army truck transporting Iraqi soldiers in an eastern neighborhood. The truck overturned, injuring 12 troop members, police Maj. Mousa Hussein said.
As Iraq’s post-election political process unfurls, the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, sat down with a group of leading Sunni religious leaders Thursday in a Baghdad mosque.
In the meeting with the Association of Muslim Scholars, Qazi “stressed the importance of ensuring that all components of Iraqi society are adequately represented in the constitutional making process,” a U.N. statement said.
Shiite Muslim and ethnic Kurdish parties, expected to announce within days the top leadership of their promised coalition government, say they’re considering involving the Sunnis beyond even just the eventual writing of Iraq’s constitution.
The Sunnis, from whose ranks many insurgent fighters are believed drawn, largely stayed away from Iraq’s historic Jan. 30 elections. Kurdish and Shiite negotiators say they’re discussing handing a Sunni Arab the defense minister’s post in an effort to include them in the process.
Shiite and Kurdish negotiators were expected to continue discussions Thursday in the capital, Baghdad.
Kurds are thought to number between 15 percent to 20 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people, with Sunni Arabs making up about the same number. Shiite Arabs make up 60 percent of the population.
The Iraqi government said Wednesday that U.S. and Iraqi forces killed 85 militants at a suspected training camp along the marshy shores of a remote lake, one of the highest guerrilla death tolls of the two-year insurgency, officials said.
The U.S. military declined Wednesday to confirm the Iraqi government’s death toll of 85 militants, however, and the death toll couldn’t be independently verified.
The raid at Lake Tharthar in central Iraq turned up booby-trapped cars, suicide-bomber vests, weapons and training documents, Iraqi Maj. Gen. Rashid Feleih told state television on Wednesday. He said the insurgents included Iraqis, Filipinos, Algerians, Moroccans, Afghans and Arabs from neighboring countries, and added that local residents told troops of the camp.
“What’s really remarkable is that the citizens this time really took the initiative to provide us with very good information,” Feleih said Wednesday.
In three days, troops have killed at least 128 insurgents nationwide, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials’ accounts.
Iraqi authorities credited recent successes against insurgents to a torrent of intelligence from citizens heartened by the Jan. 30 elections and emboldened by film footage aired on state television that shows captured insurgents confessing their roles in attacks.
“Before, the people had a neutral stance toward this issue,” said Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. “Now, they have turned against the terrorists.”