Iraq operation is a success

US and Iraqi troops pressed their sweep through a 100-square-mile swath of central Iraq yesterday in a bid to break up a centre of insurgent resistance, the US military said. No resistance or casualties were reported.

“We believe we achieved tactical surprise,” Lt Col Edward Loomis, spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division, said of the day-old Operation Swarmer. He said about 40 suspects were detained, 10 of whom were later released.

The military described the operation, in which a combined Iraq-US fighting force was delivered in 50 helicopters, as the “biggest air assault” in three years. It was not an air raid, however, as the military reported no bombing or firing from the air in the offensive northeast of Samarra, a town 60 miles north of Baghdad.

In tense Baghdad, meanwhile, drive-by gunmen targeting streams of Shi’ite Muslim pilgrims killed three people and wounded five in Sunni areas of the city, police reported.

Devout Shi’ites headed south to the holy city of Karbala for a religious holiday, a pilgrimage that authorities feared would present ‘soft’ targets in the continuing Sunni-Shi’ite violence.

At least seven people were reported killed in scattered violence in and near Baghdad.

A stand-off between the Shi’ite majority and Sunni minority underlies the political impasse blocking formation of a new government of national unity. An all-party meeting was scheduled for late last night to try to move those negotiations forward.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has played a leading role in forcing Iraqi politicians to find a compromise, said talks were under way about when he would meet Iranian officials to discuss Iraq. He said the talks should be held in Baghdad.

The joint US-Iraqi air assault on Thursday focused on a 10-by-10-mile area some 60 miles north of Baghdad and northeast of the city of Samarra, where an insurgent bombing on February 22 badly damaged a major Shi’ite shrine, an attack that ignited days of sectarian bloodshed across Iraq in which more than 500 people died.

Fifty US transport and attack helicopters were ferried in to give cover to some 1,500 US and Iraqi troops taking part in Operation Swarmer.