KIRKUK, Aug 5: Iraqi guerillas gunned down five soldiers in Kirkuk and killed two policemen in a separate bomb attack on Saturday, as government forces stepped up their campaign to regain control of the country.
The attacks preceded the arrival of more US troops in the Iraqi capital to help curb the sectarian bloodshed that has left thousands dead.
In the Kirkuk attack, a police official said, guerillas ambushed an Iraqi army patrol in the town of Hawija, in the north of the country, and killed five of them.
“This clash came after police captured 23 insurgents affiliated with Tawhid wal Jihad and Ansar as-Sunna,” he said, referring to two groups with ties to Al-Qaeda.
Further south in Khalis, 80 kilometres northeast of Bagdhad, a roadside bomb killed two Iraqi policemen and wounded eight people.
And in Baquba, a town just north of the capital notorious for sectarian attacks, three bombs detonated in a crowded street market, wounding 10 people.
In the southern town of Amara the body of a policeman who was also a former member of ousted president Saddam Hussein’s Baath party was found floating in the Tigris river with a bullet in the head.
Eleven more tortured corpses were found in and around the capital, in what has become a grim daily harvest of the victims of rival death squads, whose urban dirty war has pushed Iraq to the brink of all-out civil conflict.
MAJOR PUSH: Iraqi and US forces are believed to be preparing a major push to win back control of Baghdad from militias, and on Saturday their headquarters reported the results of several security operations.
Defence ministry spokesman Ibrahim Shaker said in a statement that in the preceding 24 hours government troops had shot dead two ‘terrorists’ and seized 63 suspects in raids across the country.
SHIA PROTEST: Crowds from Iraq’s Shia community continued to protest against Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon.
A 100-strong crowd rallied peacefully outside US and British consulates in Basra, while another group marched to government offices further north in Kut.
A British spokeswoman in Basra said: “They brought press with them and were heard to demand the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, and said that the UK and the US should pay for the damage (caused by Israeli bombing).
“The group dispersed after media interviews,” she said, adding that Britain was ‘gravely concerned about the situation in Lebanon’ and had earmarked 6.2 million pounds for humanitarian aid.
On Friday, hundreds of thousands of Shias marched in Baghdad in support of Hezbollah. The rally was largely peaceful, but three demonstrators were shot dead as they drove home through a suburb.
EXTRA US TROOPS FOR BAGHDAD: The fresh brigade for Baghdad was brought from the northern city of Mosul to beef up an ongoing security plan, Operation Forward Together, which has put 50,000 Iraqi and US soldiers on the streets of the capital.
“Around 3,700 troops from the brigade are being repositioned from up north to support the ongoing Operation Forward Together,” said US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson.
“The troops are taking positions and we would not like to offer details till their positions are finalised,” he added.—AFP
