World Tribune.com

Iraq captures key Al Qaida operative

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, June 20, 2005

BAGHDAD — U.S. officials said coalition and Iraqi security forces arrested Al Qaida's leading operative in the Mosul region.

The offiicials said Muhammad Khalaf Shakar, who was responsible for numerous suicide bombings, was detained without incident on June 14.

Shakar, wearing a suicide vest when he was captured, was termed the most trusted Iraqi regional operations chief of Abu Mussib Al Zarqawi, Middle East Newsline reported. Officials said multiple intelligence sources led coalition forces to Shakar's hideout in a quiet Mosul neighborhood.

"This is a major defeat for the Al Qaida terrorist organization in Iraq," Air Force Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, told a Baghdad news conference on Thursday. "Zarqawi's leader in Mosul is out of business."

[On Friday, the U.S. military launched a major operation along the Iraqi border with Syria. About 1,000 U.S. troops were said to be participating in Operation Spear, which focused on the Anbar province.]

Officials said Shakar, also known as Abu Talha, has been fully cooperating with coalition and Iraqi officials. They said that for months Shakar had been on the run, staying no more than one night at any residence.

"Over the past few months we've had considerable success taking apart the Abu Talha network in the Mosul area," Alston said. "This success has included killing or capturing cell leaders, car-bomb makers, financiers, extortionists, kidnappers, foreign fighters, as well as those Iraqis who support terrorists."

Al Zarqawi has regional commanders throughout Iraq's Sunni Triangle, officials said. The commanders were said to operate largely autonomous networks that ensure their own weapons, munitions, supplies and recruits.

Officials have reported a string of counter-insurgency successes this week amid a spate of mass-casualty suicide strikes in Iraq. On June 15, the Iraqi Interior Ministry's 2nd Public Order Brigade was said to have seized a bomb-making facility in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad.

U.S. officials have expressed satisfaction with the performance of several Iraqi military and police units in the Baghdad area. During Operation Cobra Lightening, which began two weeks ago, Iraq deployed nine army and seven police battalions -- aided by five U.S. Army brigades.

"The Iraqi army is being extremely effective," U.S. Army Lt. Col. Eric Wesley, commander of 1st Battalion, 13th Armored Regiment, 1st Armored Division, said. "They're [insurgents] seeing the Iraqi army in numbers that they have never seen before, and they are being targeted for this reason."


Copyright © 2005 East West Services, Inc.

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