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7 Iraqi security men killed
in combat with Al-Qaeda
42 kidnapped students released
Baghdad—Seven Iraqi security personnel were killed in clashes with
Al-Qaeda while 5 persons were killed in the Iraqi capital.
According to police officials, Iraqi security forces conducted a
raid against Al-Qaeda in Samara city of Salahuddin province
yesterday. Seven security personnel including a tribal chief were
killed in an exchange of fire with Al-Qaeda operatives.
Officials told that clashes that took place last night in Sadr city
area of Baghdad claimed 5 lives while 15 others were injured. Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani has asked all political groups to disarm
their private militias before the provincial elections of October
this year.
Meanwhile, a group of at least 40 students kidnapped by gunmen on
Sunday near the northern city of Mosul have been freed by Iraqi
security forces, police said.
“The kidnapped students have been freed by the Iraqi army and
police,” said Brigadier-General Khalid Abdul-Sattar, security
spokesman in Iraq’s Nineveh province, where Mosul, Iraq’s third
largest city, lies.
Earlier, he said 42 male university students had been seized, one of
the biggest mass abductions since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. He
later said the total number of students captured had been 40.
The gunmen had set up a fake checkpoint and stopped two buses in the
village of al-Jirin full of students returning to classes after a
weekend break.
One of the buses escaped, police said, but male students from the
other bus were loaded onto trucks and taken away. Abdul-Sattar gave
no details of the operation to free the students.
The kidnapping highlighted the continued violence in the north of
the country after much focus on tensions in the largely Shi’ite
south, where gunmen loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr
clashed with government troops late last month.
No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping but suspicion
will fall on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, which has regrouped in
northern provinces after being pushed out of western Anbar province
and Baghdad by a series of military offensives. The U.S. military
says Mosul is al Qaeda’s last major urban stronghold in Iraq.
Abductions, including occasional mass kidnappings, have been rampant
during Iraq’s descent into violence following the U.S.-led invasion
to oust Saddam Hussein. In November 2006 kidnappers snatched scores
of people from the Higher Education Ministry and many are still
officially missing. The following month gunmen seized about 30
Iraqis, mainly Red Crescent employees, in Baghdad. Most were
released.
Militant groups have carried out kidnappings for political purposes,
while criminal gangs have abducted people for ransom. The Chaldean
Archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Farraj Rahho, was kidnapped on February
29 by gunmen who killed his driver and two guards.
The archbishop’s body was found two weeks later despite appeals for
his freedom from Pope Benedict.—Agencies
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