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Green Zone Suicide Plot Foiled, U.S. Says

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Times Staff Writers

The government clamped a 24-hour curfew on the capital Saturday shortly after U.S. forces arrested the bodyguard of a prominent Sunni leader on suspicion of plotting a suicide attack inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.

A statement from the U.S. Army said the man was part of an Al Qaeda cell “in the final stages of launching a series of ... attacks” that would have used several vehicles and possibly suicide vests.

It said a seven-member cell believed to be linked to vehicle bombings in south Baghdad was planning the attacks on the area that houses the Iraqi government and U.S. and other embassies under heavy military protection.

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The Army did not say whether it had detained others.

The guard was arrested at the home of Adnan Dulaimi, one of the main figures in the minority Sunni bloc of parliament. Dulaimi was not under suspicion, the Army said.

U.S. and Iraqi officials denied any connection between the curfew announcement late Friday and the politically sensitive arrest. An Army spokesman said the U.S. had recommended the curfew in hopes of quelling violence that has increased during the monthlong observance of Ramadan.

“We have found these curfews are effective in bringing down the level of violence,” the spokesman said. “It just seemed prudent at this time.”

An Iraqi police official gave a different explanation, saying the curfew was a reaction to a plot that sounded similar to the one described by U.S. officials but was instead aimed at Baghdad residents.

“We received precise intelligence about the intentions of moving car bombs and terrorists with suicide belts to Baghdad,” said Brig. Gen. Qassim Musawi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense.

Both the U.S. Army and Dulaimi sought to minimize political fallout from the arrest of the man, who had recently joined his personal security detail.

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In television interviews, Dulaimi strongly proclaimed the innocence of the guard, accusing unnamed enemies of trying to damage his reputation and derail attempts at national reconciliation.

He said the guard, Khudhir Farhan Marjan, had no connection to terrorists and wouldn’t have been hired if he had.

Even though Dulaimi was not implicated, the arrest left the lawmaker open to scrutiny over his reputed associations with Sunni Muslim insurgent groups. After initially boycotting American-sponsored elections, Dulaimi urged Sunnis to join the political process. But suspicions persist.

In January, U.S. journalist Jill Carroll was abducted and her driver killed as they were leaving Dulaimi’s headquarters after the lawmaker failed to show up for a scheduled interview.

Shiite Muslim political leaders reacted cautiously to the arrest of his guard.

“This is a serious sign when the security of a high-ranking official has been infiltrated by terrorist groups,” said Abbass Bayati, a spokesman for the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite bloc that leads the Iraqi government.

But Bayati said he would withhold judgment until an investigation was complete.

“The people and the nation really need to know the facts, so the investigation should be finished as soon as possible,” Bayati said.

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As Saturday’s curfew began, the capital was abuzz with another rumor, that the government had called the curfew after uncovering a coup attempt by an element of the military. Officials denied it.

“These rumors are being spread by the terrorists themselves who want to shake the confidence of the Iraqi people,” said Musawi, the military spokesman.

The latest curfew, which followed a Friday overnight curfew, was imposed from early Saturday until early this morning. It was widely observed. Some of the capital’s 6 million people walked to work despite the curfew, taking up to two hours. But most stayed home.

The normally chaotic traffic all but vanished, leaving the streets empty except for hundreds of police and army checkpoints and American armored patrols.

Baghdad residents are accustomed to curfews, which are in force on Fridays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. All-day curfews have been imposed intermittently, but usually with more warning.

Some residents complained of the inconvenience caused by the 11 p.m. announcement, which they said did not give them time to prepare.

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“There was not enough time for us to shop for today; as you know, we shop day by day for Ramadan,” said a resident of the Qadisiya neighborhood who owns a vegetable shop about two miles away. “We are out of gas today to run the generators, and we can’t go out even on foot to buy gas.”

No new attacks were reported in Baghdad, but police continued to tally the casualties from previous violence.

A mortar shell that landed late Thursday in Zafaraniya in the southeast part of the city killed five people.

Police said they found 12 bodies early Saturday and an additional 23 in the afternoon, all slaying victims in various neighborhoods.

A Shiite cleric was shot to death in Diwaniya, his sister said. Two other clerics were recently killed in the city about 100 miles south of Baghdad.

Mohammed Waeli, the governor of Basra province in the south, escaped an assassination attempt. A British patrol in Basra came under fire and killed one of the attackers.

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In the northern city of Mosul, the police commander survived a roadside bombing, and another bomb near a U.S. patrol critically injured five civilians, said Dr. Fadhil Abbas of Jumhouri Hospital. Authorities in Diyala province, a stronghold of the insurgency north of Baghdad, said they had arrested 39 suspected terrorists.

A suicide car bomb targeting an Iraqi army checkpoint killed two people and wounded 30 Saturday, police in the northern town of Tall Afar said.

doug.smith@latimes.com

Times staff writers Suhail Ahmad, Shamil Aziz and Saif Hameed and special correspondents in Baghdad, Mosul and Kuwait contributed to this report.

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