Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Philadelphia Inquirer
December 25, 2006
Despite all the deaths since '03, recruits come in droves, an official said. Four U.S. soldiers died in explosions.
By Lauren Frayer, Associated Press
BAGHDAD - About 12,000 Iraqi policemen have been killed since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the country's interior minister said yesterday as clashes, a suicide bomber and weekend explosions killed more than a dozen Iraqi officers and four American soldiers.
Three U.S. soldiers from the 89th Military Police Brigade were killed Saturday in eastern Baghdad when a roadside bomb detonated, the U.S. military said. A fourth soldier, assigned to the Third Brigade Combat Team, First Cavalry Division, died Saturday in an explosion in Diyala, east of the Iraqi capital.
With their deaths, at least 2,969 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
At a news conference in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said that, despite the thousands of police deaths, "when we call for new recruits, they come by the hundreds and by the thousands."
Among the deaths yesterday were seven police officers killed when a suicide bomber hit a police station in Muqdadiyah, northeast of the capital. In Mosul, a drive-by shooting killed two policemen.
Although police have been targeted by insurgent attacks, they have also been blamed for violence. Gunmen in Iraqi army and police uniforms have been responsible for recent bank robberies in Baghdad and the kidnapping of more than 40 workers and volunteers at the Iraqi Red Crescent.
Bolani vowed to rid his ministry of rogue officers. "We formed committees to clean and purge... to dismiss the bad elements from the ministry and build our institutions," he said.
Five Iraqi officers died battling Shiite militiamen in a provincial capital in southern Iraq just months after British troops ceded control of the province to Iraqi security forces. Three days of fighting in Samawah, capital of Muthana province, posed a challenge for Iraqi forces whose responsibilities are increasing as part of a U.S. plan to put more provinces under local control.
Fighters linked to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr fired rocket-propelled grenades at police headquarters and state buildings in Samawah before government reinforcements arrived and a curfew fell on the city, police said.
Bolani sought to downplay three days of clashes in Samawah, which lies on the Euphrates River about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad.
"We know the [Iraqi] forces there can face these outlaw groups, but we want to tell the people that the government is present everywhere," Bolani said.
He refused to identify the groups, but police said they were members of Sadr's Mahdi Army.
The anti-American cleric has lost control of some elements of his militia, and it was unclear whether the gunmen considered themselves loyal to the cleric or were a renegade group intent on local control.
About 40 suspected militiamen were captured, a police official said on condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety.
Muthana was under control of British forces until July, when it became the first province to revert to Iraqi control.
"No multinational forces are there at all," said Maj. Charlie Burbridge, spokesman for British forces in the neighboring province of Basra.
Police found the handcuffed, tortured bodies of 38 men throughout the country yesterday.
December 25, 2006
Despite all the deaths since '03, recruits come in droves, an official said. Four U.S. soldiers died in explosions.
By Lauren Frayer, Associated Press
BAGHDAD - About 12,000 Iraqi policemen have been killed since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the country's interior minister said yesterday as clashes, a suicide bomber and weekend explosions killed more than a dozen Iraqi officers and four American soldiers.
Three U.S. soldiers from the 89th Military Police Brigade were killed Saturday in eastern Baghdad when a roadside bomb detonated, the U.S. military said. A fourth soldier, assigned to the Third Brigade Combat Team, First Cavalry Division, died Saturday in an explosion in Diyala, east of the Iraqi capital.
With their deaths, at least 2,969 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
At a news conference in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said that, despite the thousands of police deaths, "when we call for new recruits, they come by the hundreds and by the thousands."
Among the deaths yesterday were seven police officers killed when a suicide bomber hit a police station in Muqdadiyah, northeast of the capital. In Mosul, a drive-by shooting killed two policemen.
Although police have been targeted by insurgent attacks, they have also been blamed for violence. Gunmen in Iraqi army and police uniforms have been responsible for recent bank robberies in Baghdad and the kidnapping of more than 40 workers and volunteers at the Iraqi Red Crescent.
Bolani vowed to rid his ministry of rogue officers. "We formed committees to clean and purge... to dismiss the bad elements from the ministry and build our institutions," he said.
Five Iraqi officers died battling Shiite militiamen in a provincial capital in southern Iraq just months after British troops ceded control of the province to Iraqi security forces. Three days of fighting in Samawah, capital of Muthana province, posed a challenge for Iraqi forces whose responsibilities are increasing as part of a U.S. plan to put more provinces under local control.
Fighters linked to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr fired rocket-propelled grenades at police headquarters and state buildings in Samawah before government reinforcements arrived and a curfew fell on the city, police said.
Bolani sought to downplay three days of clashes in Samawah, which lies on the Euphrates River about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad.
"We know the [Iraqi] forces there can face these outlaw groups, but we want to tell the people that the government is present everywhere," Bolani said.
He refused to identify the groups, but police said they were members of Sadr's Mahdi Army.
The anti-American cleric has lost control of some elements of his militia, and it was unclear whether the gunmen considered themselves loyal to the cleric or were a renegade group intent on local control.
About 40 suspected militiamen were captured, a police official said on condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety.
Muthana was under control of British forces until July, when it became the first province to revert to Iraqi control.
"No multinational forces are there at all," said Maj. Charlie Burbridge, spokesman for British forces in the neighboring province of Basra.
Police found the handcuffed, tortured bodies of 38 men throughout the country yesterday.