Ringleader in Custody, Iraqi Officials Say

Iraqi military officials said Friday that a continuing offensive targeting insurgents in the hardpan desert northeast of here has resulted in the capture of additional weapons and a man they believe is among those responsible for the recent bombing of a venerated Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra.

Iraqi military and political leaders, speaking at an operations base along the Tigris River about 80 miles northeast of Baghdad, said they were checking photos and other documents to determine if they had captured one of the people they believe planned the bombing of the Golden Mosque and the killing of an Arabic TV journalist.

“One ringleader is in custody,” Iraqi Gen. Abdul Jabbar said. “He is a main person in all the attacks that took place.”

The Golden Mosque, one of Shiite Islam’s holiest places, was stormed Feb. 22 by about 20 men who placed 475 pounds of explosives throughout the building and set them off by remote control. A handful of suspects have been arrested, but authorities have not identified them.

The bombing led to scores of retaliatory attacks on Sunni Islam’s holy places and a series of tit-for-tat executions by Sunnis and Shiites. The slaying of Al Arabiya broadcast journalist Atwar Bahjat, a Samarra native who had returned to her hometown to report on the mosque bombing, underscored the deteriorating security situation.

On Thursday, in what U.S. military officials called the largest airborne operation since shortly after the start of the war in March 2003, about 1,500 U.S. and Iraqi troops swooped into the desert area in 50 helicopters.

By late Friday, officials said they had detained more than 50 people and uncovered as many as eight weapons caches, most buried in fields. In a soccer field near Balad, searchers said, they turned up a Soviet antiaircraft gun, four rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 100 pounds of explosives and hand grenades.

U.S. officials on Friday said the scope of the operation was proportionate to the relatively modest amount of weapons uncovered.

They added that the timing was not tied to the impending three-year anniversary of the invasion, which toppled President Saddam Hussein.

The officials said the offensive, called Operation Swarmer, was a show of force in an area teeming with insurgents, and was a symbol of the growing maturity of Iraqi fighting forces.

Much of the planning was done by Iraqis, the officials said. The Iraqis, who make up about half the force, which includes Americans from the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, took the lead in searching houses in the sparsely populated region.

“We realize the importance of an Iraqi army being able to take responsibility” in combat missions, said Col. Skip Johnson, standing in the shadow of the ruins of a mosque he said had been destroyed by insurgents three months ago.

Iraq’s military capability is also key to Washington’s hopes of drawing down U.S. forces in coming months.

Just as important as the planning and execution was the fact that Iraqi intelligence provided the basis for the operation.

“This fight will be won at the intelligence level,” Johnson said. “The Iraqis know the culture and they know the people.”

The operation, and the wide television coverage it has been accorded, appeared to have inflamed some Muslim clerics, who accused the Americans of waging sectarian “ethnic cleansing” against Iraq’s Sunnis.

Sheik Mohammed Faidhi, a spokesman for the Muslim Scholars Assn., called the operation “a scandal which is bigger than Abu Ghraib,” the prison where Iraqi inmates were humiliated and abused by U.S. soldiers.

“Places are raided, innocents are killed and villages are bombed under the pretext of terrorists,” he said.

U.S. military officials and local political leaders insisted that there had been no bombing.

The troops searched on foot, they said, adding that there had been no firefights in the first two days, no resistance to the troops and no deaths or injuries.

In Samarra, about 30 miles south of the search area, a soldier from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne was shot and killed Thursday while manning an observation post.

The military said the killing of the soldier was unrelated to the operation.

Two other soldiers from the 101st Airborne were killed Thursday in an “indirect fire attack” on their base northwest of Tikrit, the military announced today.

The names of all three were withheld pending notification of their relatives.

Officials said about 1,500 people live in the remote area where the offensive is taking place.

There are about 150 buildings, mostly simple huts. By evening Friday, about a third of them had been searched.

At a 70-acre okra and wheat farm, Rahma Saleh was making flatbread in an outdoor stove in the 80-degree sunshine while two of her seven children looked on.

“A lot of people came here and searched,” she said while pounding out the dough, wetting it and sticking it to the inside of the stove’s narrow chimney.

Saleh, who said her husband had been wounded in the Iran-Iraq war and could no longer work, called the soldiers polite and “very respectful.” But she insisted: “It’s all families here, no insurgents.”

The deputy governor of Salahuddin province, Abdullah Hussein, disagreed. He said residents had been complaining of being harassed by insurgents.

“A lot of people have been killed for not cooperating with them,” he said.

The bombing of the shrine in Samarra was a factor in the decision to go after the insurgents nearby.

The deputy governor guessed that they numbered about 200; U.S. officers estimated that the number was closer to 100.

Jabbar, a brigade commander with the Iraqi forces, said he was hunting a group called Mohammed’s Army, or Takfiris, which was linked to the forces of Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi.

Their principal target, the Iraqis said, was Hamed Taki, alleged to be the leader of a terrorist cell.

A U.S. military official called Taki “a person of interest that we’d like to catch.”

Elsewhere in Iraq, gunmen in Ramadi attacked people headed to Friday prayers, killing one, and fought Iraqi soldiers, killing five, officials said.

In Baghdad, gunmen also attacked worshipers, killing two and injuring 16. A suicide bomber killed himself and the driver of a bus.

Police found six more bodies around Baghdad. Four of the victims had been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot in the head.

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Times staff writers Asmaa Waguih, Caesar Ahmed, Raheem Salman and Zainab Hussein in Baghdad contributed to this report.