Iraq security sweep to be extended to Mosul

By Laura King
Times Staff Writer

April 5, 2007

BAGHDAD — Assailants opened fire on a minivan carrying power plant workers near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Wednesday, killing 11 of them in the second lethal assault on laborers in the area in five days.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iraqi officials said a 7-week-old security crackdown in the capital, helped along by an infusion of American troops, would be extended to the northern city of Mosul and other outlying areas, but provided few details.

In a sign of opposition to the sweep, a U.S.-Iraqi security center in Sadr City, a Shiite Muslim stronghold in Baghdad, came under attack by mortars and a suicide car bomb. Two security officers and two civilians were hurt.

The car bomber was halted by blast barriers at the front gate and detonated his payload about 350 yards from the center's main building. A mortar round struck inside the compound about the same time.

The security center, like others around Baghdad, was set up as part of the U.S.-Iraqi crackdown launched Feb. 13 to stem sectarian violence in the capital.

In Wednesday's attack near Kirkuk, gunmen surrounded the minivan carrying workers in the mainly Sunni Muslim area of Hawija, south of the city, then opened fire. Seven laborers were killed instantly and four died later, officials said.

Eight workers, four from the same family, were killed in a similar assault Saturday in the same district, which until now has been lightly policed. Those workers were employed at an Iraqi military base.

Power plant workers said they would go on strike in protest of poor security in the area.

Kirkuk, an oil-rich city that ethnic Kurds hope to make part of their semiautonomous region in northern Iraq, has been the scene of escalating violence over the last week, including a truck bombing near a girls school Monday that killed at least 15 people, including a U.S. soldier.

The Iraqi government is embroiled in angry debate over a plan to relocate and compensate thousands of ethnic Arabs who were sent to the city by the late leader Saddam Hussein as part of a program to dilute Kurdish dominance.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have acknowledged that one unwanted effect of the security crackdown in Baghdad has been an upswing in attacks in provincial cities and towns, with more than 500 Iraqis killed nationwide last week. The move to extend the crackdown to Mosul appeared aimed at reversing that trend.

"This operation is still ramping up," Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters in Baghdad.

In Mosul, a senior police official, Gen. Wathiq Hamdani, escaped assassination when a roadside bomb went off near his convoy. Five police officers were injured.

"There are many terrorist groups that are using Mosul as a safe haven," Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said at a joint news conference with Caldwell in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

Caldwell said the third of five more U.S. brigades being deployed in Iraq under President Bush's "surge" strategy had arrived in Iraq and was taking up positions in Baghdad. He declined to specify which units would be transferred to Mosul once in place.

Last month, a U.S. Stryker battalion was diverted from Baghdad to neighboring Diyala to give the military more mobility, firepower and troop strength in the strife-torn province. Two additional Marine battalions are expected to deploy in troubled Al Anbar province when they arrive in Iraq.

This month, Dabbagh said, Iraqi forces will assume security control in the southern province of Maysan, which has seen fighting between rival Shiite Muslim militias in recent months.

One rough indicator of sectarian violence in the capital is the number of unidentified bodies found daily. Ten were discovered in Baghdad on Wednesday; before the security sweep, the count was 40 to 50 most days.

U.S. officials said Wednesday that sectarian violence in Baghdad had decreased about one-fourth since the start of the crackdown, but acknowledged that the nationwide effects of the increase in troop strength had not yet been fully felt.

"When you look at the country at large, you have seen … not a great reduction that we had wanted to see thus far," Caldwell said.

In politics, the movement of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr said it dismissed two legislators belonging to its parliamentary faction. The two were fired reportedly because they had held unauthorized meetings with U.S. officials. The Sadr movement has generally cooperated with the security sweep.

Movement spokesman Abu Ferras Mutarri accused the two lawmakers, former Transportation Minister Salam Maliki and Qusai Abdul-Wahab, of "violating our principles." Maliki denied that he had been fired.

A mass kidnapping was reported, this one near the Shiite holy city of Karbala. Officials said that two days earlier, assailants had seized at least 19 shepherds, along with their flock of sheep.

In similar abductions in recent months, the usual pattern has been for the male hostages to turn up dead within a few days. The motive is usually sectarian.