Troops, Police Arrest 14 in Hunt for Iraq Insurgents

U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police have arrested 14 Iraqis, including a militant suspected of leading an insurgent cell composed of followers of the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, the military said Thursday.

Sami Ahmed and the other suspected insurgents were captured late Wednesday near Baqubah, a center of anti-occupation activity north of Baghdad, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle of the Tikrit-based 4th Infantry Division.

Meanwhile, five Iraqi police officers were wounded in separate attacks in northern Iraq, and a U.S. Army spokesman said a rocket struck the Green Zone in Baghdad, where the headquarters of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority is located. No injuries or damage were reported.

A roadside bomb exploded as a U.S. military vehicle passed in the town of Hadid, north of Baghdad, wounding a 4th Infantry soldier, said Master Sgt. Robert Powell, an Army spokesman. U.S. soldiers arrested one Iraqi in connection with the attack and were searching for a second man who fled on a motorcycle.

Separately, insurgents struck a police station and a patrol Thursday in and around the northern city of Mosul, wounding five officers, police and hospital officials said.

In Ramadi, nearly 1,000 people rallied to condemn Tuesday’s bombings at Shiite Muslim shrines in Baghdad and Karbala.

U.S. and Iraqi officials disagreed over how many people died in the bombings -- the deadliest since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi Governing Council said Wednesday that 271 people were killed. A U.S. coalition official Thursday released what he said was the final casualty toll: 181 people killed and 573 injured.

U.S. officials said 15 people were detained in Karbala in the attacks, although none was charged.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and other Shiite leaders accused the coalition of failing to provide adequate security for the worshipers and doing too little to prevent extremists from crossing Iraq’s porous borders.

In what appeared to be a nod to the criticism, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, said the coalition would strengthen border security, saying it was “increasingly apparent” that “a large part of terrorism” comes from outside Iraq.

“There are 8,000 border police on duty today, and more are on the way,” Bremer said. “We are adding hundreds of vehicles and doubling border police staffing in selected areas.”