Active Unit News

U.S. Nets Four Suspected Iraqi Insurgents
Thu Aug 7, 3:04 AM ET
By D'ARCY DORAN, Associated Press Writer
TIKRIT, Iraq - U.S. forces captured a suspected leader of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s loyalist militia, nicknamed "The Rock," after storming a workers' hostel in a series of raids in Tikrit Thursday that netted four men suspected of plotting attacks, the military said.
The man allegedly organized cells, paid guerrilla fighters and armed them with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles for attacks on U.S. forces in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and surrounding areas, said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, commander of the 22nd Infantry Regiment's 1st Battalion, which executed the raids.
Informants told soldiers that he was known as "The Rock" among militiamen, Russell said. He did not give the suspect's proper name.
Two men believed to be former Iraqi generals who organized guerrilla attacks nationwide were also captured in raids in a village south of Tikrit alongside an additional suspected Fedayeen militia ringleader, Russell said. He said he could not name them or say where they were captured.
Each raid increases the pressure on Saddam by triggering a chain reaction of tips leading to operations that further eat away at the remnants of the dictator's support network, Russell said,
"We are eroding all of the support of the former regime and as we continue to do so, it just collapses," he said. "Each raid seems to feed on itself now."
Thursday's raids were the product of a series of tips from residents who told soldiers that the suspects had held a meeting and then helped pinpoint their locations, Russell said.
As Apache attack helicopters circled above, about 100 soldiers backed by four battle tanks, eight Bradley fighting vehicles surrounded the hostel, which was above a block of shops, in the raid witnessed by The Associated Press. They brought 39 men out from the building and neighboring tenements.
Many of the men were shirtless and barefoot as they sat cross legged with their hands tied behind their backs while soldiers interrogated them under flashlight beams before dawn. After finding their target, soldiers released 38 of the men with an apology and a warning.
"If you fight against your government, we will hunt you down and kill you," Russell told the freed men through an interpreter.
The raids came after the U.S. military reported that none of its soldiers were killed in attacks for a fifth straight day. Military combat deaths had been coming almost daily, with 52 U.S. soldiers killed in combat since May 1, when President Bush (news - web sites) declared major combat over.
The U.S. military had earlier announced the arrest of another suspected guerrilla organizer. The man, nabbed Tuesday by Iraqi police officers, was the brother of a Saddam bodyguard captured by U.S. forces on July 29, Russell said.
Russell did not identify the man, but said he was the brother of Adnan Abdullah Abid al-Musslit, who was believed to have detailed knowledge of Saddam's hiding places.
Eighteen other suspected guerrillas were arrested in seven raids conducted across north-central Iraq (news - web sites) over a 24-hour period ending Wednesday, 4th Infantry spokeswoman Maj. Josslyn Aberle said.
She also said soldiers uncovered a large weapons cache 25 miles northeast of Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, on Sunday. It included two 20-foot missiles, 3,000 mortar rounds, 250 anti-tank rockets and almost 2,000 artillery rounds.
She said an Iraqi informant led soldiers to the cache.
In Diwaniyah, 100 miles south of Baghdad, Spanish Brig. Gen. Alfredo Cardona set up a base camp for troops from Spain, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador (news - web sites) and the Dominican Republic scheduled to arrive within weeks.
"We're repairing old barracks, setting up tents and installing air conditioners. We should be ready by Sept. 1," he said.
Their arrival will let U.S. troops head home from the region.
But new U.S. troops prepared to deploy. The 10th Mountain Division at New York's Fort Drum said Wednesday it would deploy another 600 troops to Iraq.
In Baghdad, about 5,000 members of Iraq's Turkmen minority demonstrated in front of the main U.S. military and political base to demand broader representation for their ethnic minority in the U.S.-appointed governing council. Only one of the council's 25 members is Turkman.
The protesters, most of whom came by bus from heavily Turkman areas in northern Iraq, also accused Kurds of immigrating to traditionally Turkman areas.
Iraq has a tense mix of religions and ethnicities, and many minorities are worried about their treatment and influence in Iraq's still forming state.
The grandson of the late Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in Baghdad to set up a Shiite Muslim seminary movement, praised the U.S. war and said he hoped Iraq's newfound freedoms could spread to neighboring Iran. The grandson, Seyed Hussein Khomeini, has been critical of the Islamic revolution his grandfather led in 1979.
"As an Iranian, I see it as a liberation from oppression and dictatorship and tyranny which was never known before in history," he told Associated Press Television News. "This was their salvation from their suffering."
But the former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix, denounced the war in his strongest language yet, saying the United States had better options than war and questioning its logic that war was needed to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.
"Personally, I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could — with 100-percent certainty — know that the weapons existed, and at the same time turn out to have zero percent knowledge of where they were," Blix told a Swedish radio program

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