IRAQ: Iraqi forces launched their biggest security crackdown since the fall of Saddam Hussein with the start of Operation Lightning yesterday, a sweep by 40,000 Iraqi troops who will seal off Baghdad and hunt for insurgents.
Over the next few days, Iraqi soldiers will block major routes into Baghdad and search the city district by district, looking for foreign Arab fighters and Iraqi guerrillas, Iraqi officials said. They will be supported by around 10,000 US troops deployed in the capital.
But al-Qaeda's network in Iraq said it had launched a new offensive of its own in response to the operation. Insurgents killed 20 people across Iraq, including a British soldier.
An internet statement from the group said its offensive was led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi "under his planning and supervision". "This . . . is in response to the futile plan announced by defence and interior ministers to seal off Baghdad." An internet posting on websites used by insurgents said last week that al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who leads al-Qaeda in Iraq, had been wounded. Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said he had been moved to Iran for treatment after being wounded by shrapnel in a US rocket attack.
US Air Force Gen Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that suggestions al-Zarqawi was wounded were credible. But al-Qaeda in Iraq has said al-Zarqawi is recovering and is still directing his forces. Washington is offering a $25 million bounty for al-Zarqawi's death or capture.
By yesterday evening, there were few signs of a heightened security presence in Baghdad, although checkpoints were set up in the north and south of the city and cars were searched.
Officials said the operation would gather steam in coming days.
The launch of the crackdown came after a sharp increase in suicide bombings and ambushes by insurgents who have killed around 700 people in the past month since a new Shia Islamist-led government was announced.
At least 70 US troops have been killed in the same period, the highest monthly American death toll since January when insurgents were trying to derail the January 30th elections.
The operation was announced last Thursday - potentially giving insurgents the chance to flee Baghdad before it began.
Iraq's government has come under pressure from Washington to launch a decisive response to insurgent attacks, to try to restore public confidence sapped by relentless violence and the long delay in forming a cabinet after the elections.
Insurgents kept up their offensive yesterday. Gunmen ambushed a car carrying Iraqi soldiers south of Baghdad, killing six troops, police said.
In Baghdad, insurgents fought gun battles with police in the west of the capital. Hospital officials said three people were killed, including two police.
Two suicide car bomb attacks in the capital, one near the oil ministry and the other targeting a police patrol, killed at least six Iraqis, police said.
In the town of Tuz Khurmatu south of the oil city of Kirkuk, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near an American military convoy, killing at least two Iraqis. Islamic militant group Army of Ansar al-Sunna said in an internet statement it carried out the attack in Tuz Khurmatu.
In Madaen, a mixed Sunni-Shia town southeast of Baghdad, a car bomb killed two policemen.
Near the town of Amara in mainly Shia southern Iraq, insurgents attacked a British military patrol, killing a British soldier, the Ministry of Defence in London said.
The US military also announced the deaths of two more servicemen.