June 24, 2008	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 19, 1429

A, MARA(Iraq), June 23: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday that troops are to launch a counter-insurgency drive in Diyala province, where 26 people were killed over two days in a suicide bombing and mortar attacks.

Maliki made the announcement as he visited the southern oil-rich province of Maysan where a crackdown aimed at sweeping out armed gangs and militiamen has been under way since Thursday.

Iraqi and US troops have already carried out similar offensives against insurgents in the main northern city of Mosul and against militiamen in the southern port city of Basra.

“We are proud to say that the Iraqi government, in spite of all the challenges that it has faced has been able to chase and confront Al Qaeda, outlaws and gangsters,” Maliki told tribal chiefs of Maysan.

“This success has been achieved from Basra to Mosul and next will be Diyala.” Diyala, a bastion of Al Qaeda north of Baghdad, is widely considered to be one of the most dangerous regions in the violence-wracked country.

Thousands of people have been killed in Diyala where US and Iraqi forces are engaged in sustained firefights with Al Qaeda militants and other insurgents. Maliki gave no date for the Diyala operation.

His announcement came a day after a woman suicide bomber killed 16 people in an attack on Diyala provincial governor’s office. Dozens more were wounded.

A number of suicide attacks in Diyala have been carried out by women.

On Monday, mortar fire killed at least 10 more people and wounded 20 others in the province when insurgents fired off a spate of mortar rounds which crashed on houses in Al-Adhaim town, security officials said.

The projectiles, fired during the night, were apparently aimed at the police headquarters and the mayor’s office but fell instead on people’s homes.

With both the Tigris and Diyala rivers running through lush green fields and orchards, the area’s natural beauty has not spared it from Iraq’s brutal sectarian violence that broke out in 2006.

Tens of thousands of people have fled the province and its capital city of Baquba following a wave of kidnappings and killings that the US military blames on Al Qaeda.

Security forces are also battling Al Qaeda in Mosul and Maliki vowed on Monday to “finish what we started” in the city. The operation in Mosul, labelled as Al Qaeda’s last urban bastion in Iraq, kicked off on May 14.

“In front of us we have a major goal — to return to their homes the people who have been forcibly displaced... so that Sunni and Shia may again live together,” the premier added.

In Amara, capital of Maysan, Iraqi forces have hauled in gun, mortar and bomb caches and netted nearly 100 wanted people, a top police official in the city said on Monday.

Among those detained are members of the movement led by radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who had garnered a strong following in Amara, a destitute city of 350,000 southeast of Baghdad.

Officials say that most of the 500 wanted men have fled the area.

Maliki promised that his forces would not withdraw from Maysan until “we have a guarantee that the criminals have no chance of returning” to the region.

Meanwhile, an American soldier was killed and five others injured on Monday in a small-arms fire attack south of Baghdad, the US military said.

An Iraqi security official, however, said the soldiers came under attack in the town of Madain by town councillor Ra’ad Hamud Ajil when they came to the council offices. Ajil was killed in the clash.

The latest death brings the US military’s overall losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 4,103, according to a tally based on independent website www.icasualties.org. —AFP