'Tortured' prisoners freed from Iraq hideout

US and Iraqi forces freed 42 Iraqis – some of whom had been held and tortured for months – in a raid on an al-Qaida prison in Iraq, the US military said.

The US military said troops located the hide-out in the turbulent Diyala province with a joint air and ground operation launched after receiving the tip.

US officials said the hostages were kept in a small, concrete and mud compound and were forced to sleep on dirty linens in cramped rooms.

Soldiers found rotting food in the building, the US military said.

Some of the men held hostage had been hung from the ceiling and tortured. Some suffered broken bones. Some had been captive for as long as four months.

There was at least one teenager, who said he was 14.

The military took some of them to medical facilities for treatment.

The 42 freed Iraqis marked the largest number of captives ever found in a single al -aida prison, said Major General William Caldwell, the top US military spokesman in Iraq.

Military officials said yesterday the operation, launched on tips from local residents, showed that Iraqis in the Diyala province were turning against Sunni insurgents and beginning to develop trust in US troops there.

“The people in Diyala are speaking up against al-Qaida,” said

Elsewhere in Diyala, a US soldier was killed when an explosion hit his vehicle and a second soldier was killed in an explosion in Baghdad, the military said.

The deaths brought the number of soldiers killed this month to at least 102, putting May on pace to become the deadliest month for US troops in Iraq in more than two-and-a-half years.

In other violence, a barrage of mortar rounds hit houses in a Shiite village just northeast of Baghdad, killing three women and a child and wounding seven other children, Baghdad police said.

A suicide car bomber attacked an army checkpoint in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, about 6.30pm, killing two Iraqi soldiers and wounding three others.

Gunman also killed renowned Baghdad calligrapher Khalil Mohammed al-Zahawi, 52, in a drive-by shooting in a Shiite dominated area in eastern Baghdad, police said.

Al-Zahawi, who was also a lecturer at Baghdad University, was waiting for a taxi on a main road yesterday afternoon when the gunmen sped past and killed him.

US military officials have said they expected insurgents to step up attacks as US-led forces worked to crack down on violence in Baghdad and the surrounding areas during their 14-week-old security operation.

As part of the crackdown, the military sent 3,000 more US troops to Diyala, a turbulent province north of Baghdad that has seen heavy fighting in recent weeks.

Military officials said the tip-off that led to the raid on the al Qaida hide-out outside a small village six miles south of the city of Baqouba showed that the troop increase is helping.

“The more contact we have (with) the Iraqi citizens, the more confidence that they develop in us, and in the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army. That leads to greater cooperation from the Iraqi citizenry,” said US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver.

Meanwhile, in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, 70 police officers resigned from an elite police unit and handed over their weapons, citing fears they were being targeted by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, police said.

The resignations came three days after Mahdi Army militants captured at least seven members of the police’s rapid deployment force during a gun battle, police said.

The militants badly beat the police and warned them to stop their offensive against the militia or they would kill them, a police officer said.

Some police officers had their houses firebombed, their children kidnapped and their relatives killed, he said.

“I fear reprisals, I want to keep my family and relatives safe,” he said.

Another officer who resigned said the Mahdi Army threw a grenade at a colleague’s house, killing his mother and wounding his brother.

“We don’t have sufficient weapons, just a rifle,” he said.

Today, Iranian and US diplomats were scheduled to hold rare talks in Baghdad over how to end the violence here.

US officials accuse Shiite-ruled Iran of training, financing and arming militants – including the Mahdi Army – in a bid to fan sectarian tensions. Iran denies the charge and blames the presence of US forces here for the violence.

US and Iraqi troops raided Baghdad’s Sadr City slum yesterday morning, arresting a suspect believed involved in smuggling armor piercing bombs from Iran, the military said. The suspect was part of a cell that also sent Iraqi militants to Iran for training, the statement said.

In the southern city of Basra, British forces on a raid to arrest Shiite militants came under fire and killed three of their attackers, the British military said. No British forces were injured, it said.

Al-Sadr, who emerged from months in hiding last week, met yesterday with leaders of his movement in an apparent effort to restore discipline to the group, which had shown signs of splintering in his absence.

He repeated his demands for a quick US troop withdrawal, Salah al-Obeidi, a senior aide to al-Sadr, told reporters.

“The occupation forces bear responsibility for the suffering the country is facing and there is no solution but the withdrawal of the forces,” he said.