U.S., Iraqi Forces Target Rebel Haven

U.S. and Iraqi troops set up new positions over the weekend on the outskirts of Ramadi, a haven in Al Anbar province for the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, in an effort to bottle up guerrillas who have largely controlled the city in recent months.

“We are focusing on multiple sites used by the insurgents to plan and conduct terrorist attacks and store weapons,” Lt. Col. Bryan Salas, a Marine spokesman based in nearby Fallouja, said Sunday. “We have also set up additional checkpoints to restrict the flow of insurgents, but citizens will still be able to enter and leave the city.”

Salas said that U.S. troops from one brigade and Iraqis from two brigades were taking part in the operation. A Marine brigade is generally composed of about 2,500 troops.

Military officials have for weeks downplayed the significance of combat preparations in the area, which included the arrival of 1,500 additional U.S. troops. Last week, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV said that operations in Ramadi were increasing in order to clear away insurgents who were obstructing the development of local security forces, but that he did not foresee a “Fallouja-type” operation taking place there.

In 2004, the U.S. led two assaults on insurgents in Fallouja that were among the biggest battles since the beginning of the conflict in 2003.

The U.S. military also continued to search early today for two U.S. servicemen who went missing after an attack Friday on an American checkpoint near Yousifiya, south of Baghdad. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told CNN’s “Late Edition” on Sunday that two U.S. soldiers were abducted by a group of insurgents.

U.S. military officials have declined to confirm whether the soldiers were kidnapped and are listing the pair as “duty status unknown.”

Ahmed Khalaf Falah, a farmer in the Yousifiya area, told the Associated Press that he saw seven masked gunmen kill the American driver of a Humvee at the checkpoint and then take two other soldiers captive.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government announced Sunday that it would release 300 prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison today, another in a series of releases that began this month and will eventually free 2,500 people. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has called the move a token of reconciliation aimed at appeasing Sunni Muslim Arabs, who dominate the insurgency and make up a large number of the prisoners. There are nearly 28,000 prison inmates in Iraq, according to government officials.

Iraq’s parliament met Sunday and decided to create 25 oversight committees for various government ministries. The committees are intended to check corruption and limit the influence of political factionalism.

“The heads of the committees should be different from the ministries they are monitoring,” said Abbas Bayati, a parliament member for the leading Shiite Muslim bloc. “For example, if the Shiite bloc has the Oil Ministry, then the head of the oil committee must not be from the Shiite bloc, in order to enhance the quality of the monitoring and be able to hold the ministry accountable for any misconduct.”

While the Council of Representatives focused on administrative oversight, violence continued to rock the nation.

In Baghdad, a car carrying four people exploded, killing three of the occupants. Police said they did not know why the vehicle exploded or the identities of the dead.

In Mosul, an ethnically mixed city in northwest Iraq, a car bomb detonated near an American convoy, which rolled through the blast apparently unscathed. Bystanders were not so fortunate. The explosion killed a high school girl and wounded 19 other civilians, Iraqi police said.

In Baqubah, 35 miles north of Baghdad, insurgents shot three Iranian men to death near the Diyala province travel office. A police source said that when they searched the bodies, they found Iranian national documents and forged Iraqi credentials. Police also said the men had U.S. and Iranian currency and a small video camera.

And two truckloads of men alleging to be police officers detained nine bakery workers in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya in Baghdad. A co-worker said the men were released several hours later.

“Thank God all of them are OK; none of them are here because I told them all to go home and rest,” said Hussein Adil, whose brother owns the bakery. “We don’t have much to sell today because the dough burned in the oven when they were taken away.”