Major Offensive Underway

BAGHDAD (AP) – About 10,000 American soldiers using heavily armored Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles fought their way into an AL Qaeda sanctuary northeast of Baghdad early Tuesday. American and Iraqi forces, under cover of attack helicopters, killed at least 22 insurgents, the military said.The raids, dubbed “Operation Arrowhead Ripper,” took place in Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province northeast of the capital, and involved air assaults under the cover of darkness, the military said in a statement. The operation was still in its opening stages, it said.The commander of Iraqi military operations in Diyala, Maor General Abdul-Karim al-Rubaie, said Tuesday that handcuffs, swords and electricity cables – apparently used as torture implements – had been seized from militant safe houses in the area.The operation was part of new American and Iraqi attacks north and south of Baghdad, which military officials said were aimed at clearing out Sunni insurgents, Al Qaeda fighters and Shiite militiamen who had fled the capital and Anbar during a four-month-old security operation.A top American military official said Monday that American forces were taking advantage of the arrival of the final brigade of 30,000 additional American troops to open the concerted attacks.“We are going into the areas that have been sanctuaries of al-Qaida and other extremists to take them on and weed them out, to help get the areas clear and to really take on Al Qaeda,” the senior official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the operation. “Those are areas in the belts around Baghdad, some parts in Anbar province and specifically Diyala province.”Al Qaeda has proven to be an extremely agile foe for American and Iraqi forces, as shown by its ability to transfer major operations to Baqouba from Anbar province, the sprawling desert region in western Iraq. There is no guarantee that driving the organization out of current sanctuaries would prevent it from migrating to other regions to continue the fight.In recent months, the verdant orange and palm groves of Diyala have become one of the most fiercely contested regions in Iraq. The province is a tangle of Shiite and Sunni villages that has played into the hands of Al Qaeda and allied militants who have melted into the tense region and sought to inflame existing sectarian troubles.Al Qaeda has conducted public executions in the Baqouba main square and otherwise sought to enforce an extreme Taliban-style Islamic code. The terror organization’s actions in the province have caused some Sunni militants to turn their guns on the group with American assistance and blessing. Some militant Shiites are likewise joining government forces in a bid to oust the foreign fighters and Muslim extremists.Separately, the American military on Tuesday announced the death of an American soldier in Baghdad. The soldier was killed by small arms fire during combat in an eastern section of the capital, a military statement said. No other soldiers were wounded in the attack, which took place Monday, it said.The death brought to at least 3,528 the number of American military personnel who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,889 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.In southern Iraq, police and hospital officials said the death toll reached 22 in clashes that continued into a second day between Mahdi Army fighters and Iraqi security forces in Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad.More than 60 people were injured, mostly policemen, authorities said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.Nine mortar shells were launched early Tuesday at Iraqi police headquarters in the town, and three policemen were injured, police said. A vehicle also was destroyed in the shelling, they said.Two civilians were wounded in another round of shelling in a residential area nearby, police said.Iranian-made rockets were seized in raids in central Nasiriyah early Tuesday, police said.A day earlier, the American military released a statement saying at least 20 people were killed by coalition airstrikes in Amarah, another southern city known as a Mahdi Army stronghold. Iraqi officials said 36 people died in fighting that erupted as British and Iraqi forces conducted house-to-house searches.The American statement said the fighting involved members of a terror network that imports deadly armor-piercing weapons made in Iran known as “explosively formed penetrators,” or EFPs. They also were suspected of bringing militants from Iraq to Iran for terror training, it added.The death toll in sectarian violence Monday skyrocketed after a brief period of relative peace. At least 111 people were killed or found dead nationwide, with 33 bodies of torture victims showing up in Baghdad alone.___Associated Press Writer Hamid Ahmed contributed to this report.

Major Offensive Underway

Major Offensive Underway

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