U.S.-Iraqi Offensive Targets Insurgents

U.S. and Iraqi forces began a major helicopter and ground attack Thursday on an insurgent stronghold near Samarra, the Sunni Arabdominated city where the bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine last month set off waves of sectarian bloodshed across the country.

The assault was underway 80 miles north of Baghdad as the parliament elected three months ago held its inaugural session here amid extraordinary security and sharp exchanges that reflected Iraq’s deepening divisions. The meeting was quickly adjourned so that political bosses could resume U.S.-guided talks on the makeup of a new government’s leadership.

The joint military operation and the new parliament are elements of an American strategy to start bringing home U.S. troops, who arrived here nearly three years ago to topple President Saddam Hussein. Iraq’s military has been taking a bigger role in fighting a Sunni-led insurgency made up in part of Hussein’s supporters.

And under U.S. diplomatic pressure, leaders of all parliamentary factions are struggling to avert full-scale sectarian conflict by holding talks aimed at bringing minority Sunni representatives into a broad coalition government along with majority Shiites, ethnic Kurds and secular-minded parties.

Adnan Pachachi, at 83 the oldest member of parliament, underscored the urgency of the task in unusually blunt remarks to his colleagues after he had been appointed temporary speaker.

“The country is going through dangerous times ... and the perils come from every direction,” he said during the nationally televised session.

“We have to prove to the world that there will not be civil war among our people. The danger is still there, and our enemies are ready for us.

“We’re still at the beginning of the road to democracy,” he added, “and we’re stumbling.”

The country’s billowing violence Thursday reached the northern region of Kurdistan, long a haven of calm. Three people were shot to death in Halabja as hundreds of protesters stormed and set fire to a museum honoring Kurdish victims of a 1988 poison gas attack on the town by Hussein’s military.

The clash between Kurdish militiamen and Kurds angry at their own leaders was a stunning challenge to the autonomous Kurdish government that has ruled the region for 15 years. The protesters used the anniversary commemoration of the massacre to call attention to shortages of water and electricity in the town, where they said the museum was the only new building constructed in the past decade.

Hospital officials said seven protesters and five militiamen were injured in the fighting, which witnesses said started when a regional official, Shahu Mohammed Saed, joined the commemoration. People stormed the one-story circular museum, smashing displays reconstructing the gas attack and a polished black stone bearing the names of more than 5,000 victims.

Saed blamed the rioting on Ansar al-Islam, an insurgent group sporadically active in Kurdistan, and said one of its members was under arrest.

At least 17 other people were killed or found dead Thursday in violence across Iraq.

U.S. officials who announced the counterinsurgency assault in Samarra, known as Operation Swarmer, emphasized the involvement of Iraq’s army, which provided 800 of the 1,500 troops involved.

That is fewer total troops than have taken part in assaults to drive insurgents from Fallouja, Ramadi and other cities. But more than 50 aircraft, mainly helicopters, transported the troops and gave them air cover, making it the largest airborne attack in Iraq since April 2003, military officials said.

A statement by the U.S. command said that the raids by the Army’s 101st Airborne Division and Iraq’s 1st Brigade would continue for several days, and that a number of insurgent weapons caches -- containing artillery shells, explosives, army uniforms and materials for making car bombs -- had been discovered.

Army Lt. Col. Edward S. Loomis, a U.S. military spokesman, said 40 people were detained for questioning on the first day of the assault. There were no reports of resistance or casualties.

Residents of the area, northeast of Samarra, said they heard large explosions in the distance after troops, helicopters and armored vehicles swooped in shortly after 7 a.m. They said the operation was concentrated around four villages that have harbored insurgent followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose Al Qaeda in Iraq organization has been blamed by U.S. and Iraqi officials for the Feb. 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque.

Repeated sweeps by American troops have failed to secure the Samarra area. U.S. and Iraqi officials said the timing of the latest raid was unrelated to the mosque bombing or next week’s third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.

Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s interim foreign minister, told CNN that the attack was aimed at preventing insurgents from creating a stronghold such as the one they had set up in Fallouja for much of 2004 and later along the Euphrates River in western Iraq.

“After Fallouja and some of the operations carried out successfully in the Euphrates and Syrian border, many of the insurgents moved to areas nearer to Baghdad,” Zebari said. “They have to be pulled out by the roots.”

In Baghdad, Iraqi officials imposed a daylong vehicle ban to help protect the newly elected legislators as they gathered at the convention center inside the fortified Green Zone, which is surrounded by layers of concrete blast walls and concertina wire.

Two mortar shells fired from outside the Green Zone fell harmlessly near the convention center after the legislators had left.

The 275-member Council of Representatives, elected in December, is Iraq’s first full-term, democratically chosen parliament in half a century. It replaced the interim parliament elected in January of last year and will serve until 2010.

But with no agreement yet among political factions over the makeup of the country’s leadership, the new parliament cannot elect its own officials or conduct substantive business. Its inaugural session lasted 40 minutes, long enough for members to hear two speeches and take the oath of office.

The ceremonial session kicked off a 60-day period during which the body is required by the constitution to elect a new president and approve a prime minister and a Cabinet by a two-thirds majority.

Political leaders are at an impasse over several issues, including the nominee for prime minister. The most optimistic participants Thursday said the talks could last another month.

“People have been listening to each other, making progress, making compromises,” said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is involved in the discussions and trying to push them along.

“But still there are difficult days ahead.”

Interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari told reporters Thursday that he would relinquish his nomination to continue on in the post “if the people ask me.” But so far his Shiite coalition, which needs allies to get him elected, has stood behind Jafari in the face of demands by the main Sunni parties, the Kurds and secular leaders that he be replaced by someone more conciliatory.

Tension between the Shiites, who dominate the interim government, and other blocs surfaced in parliament when Pachachi, a secular Sunni, said in his speech that Cabinet ministers should not be chosen on a sectarian basis.

He was cut off by Abdelaziz Hakim, head of the Shiite bloc’s largest party. Sitting in the front row in black robes and a turban, he said: “This is the first session. We shouldn’t go into all these details.”

Pentagon officials have said that decisions over future troop movements are closely tied to the formation of a functioning Iraqi government.

Times staff writers Louise Roug, Raheem Salman, Caesar Ahmed and Asmaa Waguih in Baghdad,special correspondent Azad Seddiq in Sulaymaniya, Iraq, and a special correspondent in Samarra contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Busy day in Iraq

Just hours before the Iraqi parliament was sworn in Thursday, coalition and Iraqi troops launched an attack northeast of Samarra to disrupt insurgent operations. The parliament now has 60 days to elect a president and approve a new prime minister and Cabinet.

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Parliament composition

United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite): 130

Kurdish Coalition: 53

Kurdistan Islamic Union: 5

Iraqi Accordance Front (Sunni): 44

Iraqi Front for National Dialogue (Sunni): 11

Iraqi National List (Secular): 25

Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc: 3

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Parties with one seat:

- Iraqi Nation List (Sunni)

- Yazidi minority religious sect

- Rafidain List (Christian)

- Turkmen Iraqi Front

- Turkish Iraqi Front (Secular)

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Sources: Associated Press, Iraqi government.