Outrage as US troops arrest Sunni leader

FOUR American and four Italian military personnel were killed in separate aircraft crashes, military officials said yesterday, as Iraq’s prime minister condemned the arrest of a top Sunni political leader by US troops.

Yesterday’s 12-hour detention of Iraqi Islamic Party leader Mohsen Abdul-Hamid did little to help American efforts to entice Iraq’s once-dominant Sunni community back into the political fold.

The arrest of Abdul-Hamid, his three sons and four guards was condemned by Iraq’s president and prime minister plus the leaders of Shi’ite and Sunni Muslim groups.

“We condemned as early as possible (the arrest of Abdul-Hamid) ... and from now on we will confront these matters so we can be sure they won’t be repeated again in the future,” al-Jaafari told reporters.

Few details were available on why the Americans arrested the Sunni leader, but it appeared to be related to the ongoing Sunni-led insurgency.

The US military acknowledged it had made a “mistake” by detaining Abdul-Hamid, a short-time leader of Iraq’s dissolved US-backed Governing Council whose party boycotted the January 30 national elections but has recently agreed to join the country’s political process.

Iraq’s raging insurgency, which has killed more than 760 people since the new Shi’ite-led government was announced April 28, is believed to be strongly backed by Sunni extremists.

The arrests came after the launch of Operation Lightning, a large-scale anti-insurgent campaign that entered its third day yesterday.

“We have so far achieved good results and rounded up a large number of saboteurs, some are Iraqis and some are non-Iraqis,” Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said.

The operation, which will see more than 40,000 Iraqi security forces deployed to the capital’s streets, aims at ridding Baghdad of militants and, in particular, suicide car bombers. But despite efforts to curb the violence, insurgents launched attacks inside Baghdad and north of the capital.

Gunmen shot dead Jerges Mohammed Sultan, an Iraqi journalist working for Iraqi state TV channel Al-Iraqiya, as he left his house in the northern city of Mosul.

Insurgents have in the past targeted both the station and its journalists. One of its anchorwomen, Raiedah Mohammed Wageh Wazan, was kidnapped and killed in late February.

A suicide car bomber killed two Iraqi soldiers in an early morning attack on an army checkpoint near Buhriz, about 35 miles north of Baghdad. And five gunmen fired from a speeding car on a police patrol in eastern Baghdad’s Dora district, wounding four policemen.

The Iraqi single-engine Comp Air 7SL aircraft crashed near the village of Jalula, about 80 miles north-east of Baghdad.

The aircraft, one of seven used by the Iraqi Air Force for surveillance and personnel transport, had departed a Kirkuk air base bound for Jalula when it crashed. It was not immediately clear what caused the crash, which killed four US Air Force members and an Iraqi pilot.

The Italian AB-412 military helicopter crashed overnight killing its two Italian pilots and two gunmen, all attached to the army, about eight miles south-east of Nasiriyah. Most of Italy’s 3,000 troops are based in Nasiriyah. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.

Some 26 Italian military personnel, including intelligence agent Nicola Calipari, have been killed in Iraq.

Back in Italy, the casualties fuelled opposition calls for a troop pull-out.

Defence Undersecretary Filippo Berselli told MPs that the deaths “strengthen the awareness of the risks and difficulties of the mission.” But, he added, “the complexity and delicacy of the situation ... should not make us withdraw our support.”

The governor of western Iraq’s volatile Anbar province was killed during clashes between US forces and the insurgents who abducted him. Government spokesman Laith Kuba said the body of Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi, who was abducted on May 10, was found two days ago in the village of Rawah.