BAGHDAD—Iraqi and U.S. forces have arrested about 100 suspects thought to be crucial to the operations of militant groups in al Qaeda's last haven of north Iraq, the commander of U.S. forces in the area said on Monday.
The Iraqi military launched an offensive against al Qaeda in the northern city of Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province on May 10. It has been largely Iraqi-led, with U.S. forces playing a support role.
Gunmen from Sunni Islamist al Qaeda regrouped in Nineveh after being pushed out of other parts of Iraq. The U.S. military says Mosul is its last major urban stronghold, from where its fighters still stage suicide bomb attacks and assassinations.
"They have arrested upward of about 1,250 individuals, of which about 100 are critical targets," Major-General Mark Hertling told Reuters in a telephone interview from Mosul.
"In the last several weeks, we have either captured or killed several AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq) emirs (commanders), some suicide cell leaders, some military cell leaders," he said, adding that some were from other groups with loose links to al Qaeda.
"Some of them are very senior. I'm talking about military emirs, battalion level commanders in al Qaeda," he said.
Mohammed al-Askari, spokesman for Iraq's Defence Ministry, said Iraqi forces had captured one of the Mosul leaders of al Qaeda on Sunday.
Abdul Khaleq al-Sabawi, head of al Qaeda's military organization in Mosul, was arrested near Tikrit, half-way between Mosul and Baghdad, in Salahuddin province and taken back to Mosul, he said.
Disrupted
Many of the others arrested in the raids were criminals, Hertling said, but the operation had also yielded some al Qaeda fighters the government had not previously known about. Two hundred on a list of al Qaeda targets were still at large.
"We are getting some intelligence that they have been very disrupted," Hertling said. "We've significantly reduced the number of attacks in the city."
The number of attacks attributed by the U.S. military and Iraqi officials to al Qaeda has fallen notably in recent weeks.
U.S. officials blame al Qaeda for most big bombings in Iraq, including an attack on a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that set off a wave of sectarian killings that nearly tipped Iraq into all-out civil war.
An influx of U.S. troops last year and a decision by Sunni Arab tribes to turn against al Qaeda enabled U.S. and Iraqi forces to push the militants out of Baghdad and the western province of Anbar, their former strongholds.
The U.S. military says al Qaeda in Iraq is largely foreign-led but that its foot soldiers are mainly Iraqis.
Iraq's Sunni Arab vice president called on the U.S. military on Monday to make an example of an American soldier who used a copy of the Koran for target practice, demanding he receive the "most severe punishment".
Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said he had received an official apology from the U.S. military in a meeting with Lieutenant-General Lloyd Austin, the number two U.S. military commander in Iraq.
The soldier was disciplined and removed from Iraq after a copy of the Muslim holy book was found pocked with bullet holes at a shooting range, the U.S. military said on Sunday.
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