|
Minister's brother free after gunbattle
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-03 10:46
The brother of Iraq's interior minister escaped Sunday amid the chaos of a
gunfight between his captors and members of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army
militia, according to Iraqi police and a militia official.
Minister's brother
free after gunbattle | It remained unclear who
kidnapped Dr. Abdul Jabbar Solagh Jabr, the brother of Interior Minister Bayan
Jabr, Saturday afternoon in eastern Baghdad.
Mehdi Army fighters engaged in a gunbattle with Jabr's captors, said Abbas
al-Rubaie, an official with the radical cleric's office in Sadr City.
An official with Baghdad's emergency police confirmed al-Rubaie's account,
saying police sent a patrol to the scene after the gunbattle.
Al-Sadr is the Shiite cleric whose supporters battled U.S. troops for months
last year in Najaf and Baghdad. Al-Sadr and the group later started
participating in the country's political process.
Al-Rubaie said four Mehdi militia men were on their regular patrol Sunday
around 7:15 p.m. (12:15 p.m. ET) when they discovered a parked car.
As the armed men approached, gunmen opened fire on them from inside the car,
al-Rubaie said.
After several minutes of gunfire, al-Rubaie said the abductors fled -- one of
them wounded -- leaving Jabr inside the vehicle.
The abductors had made no demands for his release, a Health Ministry official
told CNN earlier Sunday.
Jabr, who is the head of al-Hakim hospital, was kidnapped Saturday around
4:30 p.m. by four gunmen while he was driving in the eastern Baghdad
neighborhood of Habibiya, according to a police official in the capital.
Jabr was stopped, pulled out of his car, put in another vehicle by the
kidnappers and driven away, the official said.
Officials determined his identity when they found documents during a search
of his car at the scene, the police official said.
An Iraqi police official told CNN that Jabr usually travels in his own car
without bodyguards.
Meanwhile, gunmen killed the director-general of Iraq's Municipalities and
Public Works Ministry, an Iraqi police official said Sunday.
Safaa Muhammed was driving his car in the western Baghdad neighborhood of
Mansour when passing gunmen opened fire.
Second day of offensive
U.S. Marines and soldiers faced sporadic small
arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades as they entered Karabila on Sunday, part
of the military's latest operation in Anbar province.
About 1,000 forces, backed by Marine aircraft, are trying to root out
insurgents and enemy fighters in an area near the Syrian border, the military
said.
No Marine casualties have been reported in the first two days of the
offensive. One U.S. soldier was wounded, military officials said.
During the push into eastern Karabila, five miles from Syria, U.S. planes
dropped three 500-pound bombs on a compound that they suspected to be an
insurgent stronghold.
In another incident, seven civilians were wounded, six of whom were
hospitalized, by a tank round.
Also, U.S. forces fired a .50-caliber machine gun at a suspicious vehicle,
which blew up as if it was loaded with explosives.
On Saturday, U.S. forces went house to house in Sa'da, where many people fled
before the mission. One resident told CNN many feared destruction similar to
Falluja, site of ferocious battle in November.
"For the past several months, terrorists within Sa'da have escalated their
intimidation and murder campaign against the local populace and city government
officials," the military said.
The military said it killed eight insurgents in Sa'da, which is about 12
miles from the porous Syrian border.
According to the military, four of the insurgents were killed when they
attacked a Marine position with small arms and at least one car rigged with a
bomb. One insurgent surrendered, the military said.
Marines also found the town "littered" with homemade bombs, CNN's Jennifer
Eccleston reported.
Karabila has been the site of two previous missions -- Operation Matador in
May and Operation Spear in June.
In the past, U.S.-led offensives in Anbar have lasted about a week, but
insurgents have returned to towns after the troops left. The city of Hit,
however, still has a U.S. and Iraqi presence, after coalition forces took
control about two months ago.
On Monday, the U.S. military said it was redeploying troops to the
30,000-square-mile region bound by the Euphrates River and the borders of
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria, where the Marines had been stretched thin.
Military officials believe more than 1,000 insurgents operate in the
province, said Col. Stephen Davis, commander of the Marine Regimental Combat
Team 2.
Operation Iron Fist was launched two weeks ahead of an October 15 national
referendum on a new Iraqi constitution.
|
 | | | Bali bombings kill 25, 100 injured | | |  | | | US millionaire ready for space trip | | |  | | | Los Angeles fire | | |
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top World
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
