December 22, 2003	Monday	Shawwal 27, 1424

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WASHINGTON, Dec 21: Several hundred people have been detained in Iraq in a sweep against insurgents using intelligence following the capture of Saddam Hussein, General Richard Myers, head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday.

Myers told Fox television that the US military believed some of the detainees were insurgency leaders.

The general said the raids followed the detention last weekend of the deposed Iraqi president.

“It gave us a better understanding of the structure of the resistance,” Myers said in an interview. He said that between “a couple of hundred” and “several hundred” had been detained in the raids across Iraq.

“We think there is some leadership of the insurgency,” he added.

Myers gave no other details of the raids but commented: “The capture of Saddam Hussein and the intelligence we gleaned from him is a big step in the inevitable process of Iraq’s march to democracy.”

US RAIDS: Witnesses said on Sunday US troops were conducting a second day of house-to-house searches in the town of Rawah, close to the Syrian border. Soldiers manning checkpoints were stopping cars from entering the town.

Residents said scores, some former Baath party members, had been arrested.

Witnesses in the town of Falluja, 50 kms west of Baghdad, said five people were arrested in a pre-dawn raid on a number of houses. There were no details on those arrested.

In Samarra to the east, the US military said on Saturday night 111 people had been arrested within 48 hours as part of operations to flush out guerrillas.

It said 15 of those arrested were targeted as prominent figures in anti-US activities throughout the area. Weapons and ammunition caches have also been seized.

In the northern town of Mosul, soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division detained a suspect for Baath Party activities, including continuing to hold Baath Party meetings, planning possible attacks on US forces and for “possible war crimes to include torture and murder”, the military said.

US forces have pursued the hunt for guerrillas in the last week, buoyed by last week’s capture of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein near his hometown of Tikrit.

Only one US soldier is known to have been killed by hostile fire since the announcement of Saddam’s arrest. Saddam loyalists and Islamist fighters have killed 200 US soldiers since Washington announced an end to major combat on May 1.

Western security sources warn that the threat of attacks has not diminished. Intelligence indicates more attacks are planned against US and Western targets over the Christmas period.

Saboteurs, who have wreaked havoc on US efforts to restore the country’s devastated infrastructure after Saddam’s fall, set fuel storage tanks ablaze in Baghdad and ruptured a pipeline feeding oil products to Baghdad refineries.

An explosion ignited fuel tanks in the Ur district of Baghdad in a pre-dawn attack, witnesses said. No casualties were reported but hundreds of thousands of litres of fuel were burnt.—Agencies