US and Iraqi troops attack insurgent stronghold

IOL: US and Iraqi troops attack insurgent stronghold: "US and Iraqi troops swept into the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar early today, conducting house-to-house searches and battering down walls with armoured vehicles in a second bid to clean the city of militant fighters.

South of Baghdad, Police made yet another gruesome discovery, uncovering the bodies of 18 men who had been handcuffed and shot to death.

“Two days ago gunmen in police uniforms broke into their houses in a Shiite neighbourhood of Iskandariya,” said police Capt. Adel Kitab said.

Iskandariya is 30 miles south of Baghdad. Dozens of bodies, apparently killed in summary executions in growing tit-for-tat vengeance killings by Shiite and Sunni “death squads” have been reported in recent weeks.

In the capital, Baghdad International Airport – the country’s only reliable and relatively safe link to the outside world – reopened early today after a day’s closure in a payment dispute between the government and a British security company.

London-based Global Strategies Group said it had agreed to return to work after the government promised to pay 50 percent of what the company said it was owed.

Iraq police said two mortar shells were fired into the Green Zone that houses the US Embassy, the Iraqi parliament and government offices. There was no word on casualties or damage.

In the Tal Afar offensive, expected for weeks, coalition forces initially faced several hundred lightly armed insurgents in the largely deserted city, 260 miles north-west of Baghdad and about 60 miles east of the Syrian border.

There was heavy gunfire in the Sarai district – the oldest part of the city and the major insurgent headquarters.

“I can see why the terrorists chose this place for a fight, it’s like a big funnel of death,” Sgt. William Haslett of Rocklin, California, said of the twisting streets and alleys in the old city."


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