U.S. occupation forces launched several weekend raids in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the army said on Sunday.
The U.S. Army’s Stryker Brigade Combat Team arrested 11 suspects, including an alleged rebel leader and seized arms and explosives material in a series of raids over the weekend in Mosul.
The raids are part of the military’s scheme to secure the city before launching a major offensive similar to the one launched in Fallujah last November.
Also Sunday, the U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz admitted that the security threat to the Jan. 30 election was worse than in last October's poll in Afghanistan and that it was impossible to ensure "absolute security" against the "extraordinary intimidation that the enemy is undertaking."
"I would underscore that there was intimidation in Afghanistan — the Taliban threatened all kinds of violence against people who registered or people who voted," Wolfowitz said. "But I don't believe they ever got around to shooting election workers in the street or kidnapping the children of political candidates."
In Baghdad, some 300 supporters of Shiite cleric Muqtada Al Sadr started a three-day sit-in outside the building of the Oil Ministry to protest gasoline shortages.
Many of them entered the ministry and complained to Minister Thamir Ghadbhan, asking why U.S. forces have fuel for their vehicles while Iraqis don’t.
U.S. forces kill four Iraqis in Samarra
Meanwhile, U.S. forces opened fire on a civilian vehicle that approached them near the central city of Samarra on Sunday morning.
Iraqi police and many witnesses reported that four people were killed and that the car was struck by a tank fire but an army spokesman claimed that ground soldiers fired warning shots in the air before targeting the car. He also said that only two people were wounded in the shooting.
11 National Guardsmen kidnapped
A group in Iraq claimed that it was responsible for kidnapping 11 Iraqi soldiers who were reported missing last week.
The group posted a statement on a Web site saying that "Your brothers were able to carry off a well-turned ambush against the crusaders' right hand in Iraq,"
The statement didn’t provide any further details.
Iraqi authorities said that the soldiers were kidnapped on Friday from a bus near their base in the town of Hit, 90 miles west of Baghdad.
In other developments,
- Police said that a Katyusha rocket hit a home close to the building of the Kurdish regional parliament in Irbil, east of Mosul, where senior officials of the two main Kurdish parties were meeting to discuss the January elections.
- Rebels ambushed an Iraqi National Guard convoy south of Baghdad, wounding two soldiers, one of them seriously, police Lt. Adnan Abdul-Allah said.
- joint U.S.-Iraqi base in Ramadi was hit by five explosions, witnesses said. Fierce clashes were also reported in the city center.
- The Oil Ministry announced that Iraq’s northern exports to the Ceyhan terminal will be resumed within ten days.