PrairiePundit

Bill Roggio: More than 375 insurgents and al Qaeda operatives have been captured during the first week of Operation Omens of Prosperity in Diyala province. Six senior al Qaeda in Iraqi leaders in the province have been captured during the province-wide operation. The Iraqi military announced it captured 265 suspected al Qaeda fighters during operations from July 29 through Aug. 2. Five members of al Qaeda's provincial shura, or executive council, were captured during this timeframe. Iraqi troops captured Qussai Ali Khalaf, the leader of al Qaeda's Islamic State in Iraq in Diyala province; Adnan Gumer Mohammed, the provincial "judge"; Ahmed Quasim Jabbar the provincial military commander; Abu Anas al Baghdadi , "a top al-Qaeda operative in Diyala"; Basem al Safaah , who led sectarian attacks against Shia; and Antisar Khudair a woman who recruited female suicide bombers. Al Qaeda has stepped up female suicide attacks in an effort to bypass increased securit...

Reuters: Iraqi security forces are poised to launch a major crackdown in volatile Diyala province, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday, the latest in a series of operations aimed at stabilizing the country. Sunni Islamist al Qaeda has sought to stoke tensions in the religiously and ethnically mixed northeastern province, which has seen a string of suicide bombings in recent months. The crackdown will be the latest Iraqi-led offensive aimed at stamping government authority on areas once in the hands of Sunni Arab insurgents or Shi'ite militias. U.S. and Iraqi officials say a campaign against al Qaeda in the northern city of Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province has helped reduce violence there. Other operations have targeted Shi'ite militias in the southern provinces of Basra and Maysan. "Soon, the security forces will be in Diyala to play the role they played in Basra and Maysan and Mosul, and Diyala could be the last stage," Iraqi Interi...

McClatchey-Tribune /Houston Chronicle: GIs call it "KBS" or "the Khan," and for most of the past two years, this agricultural town of 100,000 in Iraq's Diyala province was the site of fierce fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslim extremists. After a firefight Feb. 25 that killed at least nine insurgents, however, the Iraqi and U.S. militaries declared that al-Qaida in Iraq had been pushed out of the area. Diyala remains one of the most dangerous provinces in Iraq, but thousands of people who had fled the region, fearing fighting between the armed forces and insurgents, returned last month to villages near the Diyala River. Local Sunni militias are forming in villages that Sunni insurgents occupied a few months ago, with the U.S. military paying recruits $10 a day. In a small village north of Khan Bani Sa'ad, the loudest sound one recent morning was a rooster's cackles. As his platoon leader negotiated with a tribal leader, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. David...

CNN: U.S. troops raided a suspected suicide bomber cell Sunday, killing a dozen militants, half of whom had shaved their bodies -- which the U.S. military says indicates they were in the final stage of preparation for a suicide attack. Troops came under fire while approaching a building in the volatile Diyala province, military spokesman Maj. Winfield Danielson said in an e-mail. The troops returned fire, killing five men, before demanding that the remaining occupants exit the building. Some complied; others remained in the building, Danielson said. The militants inside opened fire when U.S. troops stormed the building. Seven more militants were killed in the gunfight, Danielson said. "Six of the terrorists killed had shaved their bodies, which is consistent with final preparation for suicide operations," he said. Inside, troops found assault weapons, ammunition, grenades and vests like the ones suicide bombers use to conceal explosives. ... As the surge developed many o...

USA Today: When the two Army Rangers slipped inside the house of suspected assassins in the dark on Christmas morning in Mosul, they expected a fight. They got one. Two gunmen, using an 11-year-old boy as a shield, confronted the soldiers. One, a Ranger staff sergeant, shot them dead with his rifle. The boy was unharmed, according to an Army document that outlined the assault. That clash — recounted to USA TODAY by four of the Rangers involved and confirmed by the military command in Baghdad — kicked off what U.S. military officials say was a 17-hour firefight that resulted in the deaths of 10 al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgents, including the head of an assassination cell, a financier and a military leader. At least one fighter was from Saudi Arabia, according to the military account of the raid. Intelligence gleaned from the fight led to 10 follow-up operations, the Rangers' commander said. The Dec. 25 raid occurred in what military officials say has become the most dangerous part of I...

NY Times: The courtyard was a scene of devastation, strewn with medieval mud brick and modern cinder block, shattered alike by the explosion that killed six American soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter. From the alleyway outside a day later, there was little sign that this was the house where the bomb exploded Wednesday, during an offensive to clear Sunni insurgents from the northern Diyala River valley, 60 miles north of Baghdad. The same building complex had been cleared of explosives two weeks earlier, commanders say. But the ill-fated unit was apparently lured back to it by a villager who did not tell them that insurgents had sneaked back in later and rigged the house to explode. A soldier who was there, Sgt. Joseph Weeren, described in a telephone interview on Sunday how, after he was pulled from the wreckage, he and his comrades pulled four badly wounded survivors, men “screaming in pain,” from the rubble using only their bare hands and vehicle jacks. “It was scary, because how ...

Washington Times: U.S. military forces say they have largely completed combat operations and are working to consolidate their gains after a six-day push into the so-called "Bread Basket" area of Diyala province. Clearing operations still are under way in the area, military authorities said, but day-to-day security will be handed over increasingly to Iraqi army and police units. A network of Concerned Local Citizens groups — an armed neighborhood-watch organization — also will be buttressed and expanded. "Although decisive, the combat operations will likely not have as great of an effect as the next phases," said Lt. Col. James Brown, executive officer of 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the Army's 2nd Infantry Division. He said efforts would focus on establishing stronger connections between villages surrounding the city of Muqdadiyah and Iraq's central government. The Bread Basket, an area of about 110 square miles in the northern Diyala River Valley, had...

LA Times /Houston Chronicle: Singing and cheering, Iraqi soldiers rolled through snow and sleet in open trucks Friday to set up a base on the outskirts of the reputed nerve center of Sunni militants who had forced the northern Diyala River Valley into their self-styled Islamic caliphate. The two companies from the 1st Iraqi Army Division that arrived from Anbar province were the first Iraqi forces to penetrate the former militant stronghold in more than a year. U.S. commanders hope the Iraqis can take over security responsibility there quickly to free up their forces, which launched a nationwide push this week against the Sunni militant group al-Qaida in Iraq. U.S. intelligence indicated about 200 insurgents previously were holed up in the Diyala valley, some of them displaced by U.S. operations in Baghdad and the provincial capital, Baqouba. As U.S. soldiers went from village to village, residents identified Hembis as the base from which the militants enforced their rigid brand of I...

AP /Houston Chronicle: U.S. bombers and jet fighters unleashed 40,000 pounds of explosives during a 10-minute airstrike today, flattening what the military called al-Qaida in Iraq safe havens on the southern outskirts of the capital. The strikes, carried out above approaching troops, was part of Operation Phantom Phoenix, a nationwide campaign launched Tuesday against al-Qaida in Iraq. A military statement said two B-1 bombers and four F-16 fighters dropped the bombs on 40 targets in Arab Jabour in 10 strikes. Al-Qaida fighters are believed to control Arab Jabour, a Sunni district lined with citrus groves and scarred by daily violence. "Thirty-eight bombs were dropped within the first 10 minutes, with a total tonnage of 40,000 pounds," the statement said. The attack came a day after the U.S. military reported that nine American soldiers were killed north of the capital in the first two days of a new offensive. Many militants have fled U.S. and Iraqi forces massing north o...

LA Times: Under cover of darkness early today, U.S. soldiers crept across a bridge where just days before insurgents had left a chilling warning: a severed human head with a message identifying the victim as a U.S. collaborator scrawled across the forehead with a black marker. About 4,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces, backed by war planes and attack helicopters, swept into the northern Diyala River Valley overnight Monday in pursuit of insurgents who have made the region one of the most violent in Iraq. It was the latest in a series of operations in the last year to flush the Sunni militant network Al Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliates out of their havens in Diyala, a province the size of Maryland with more than 1.6 million people. "What we want to do … is put a stake in it and be done," said Brig. Gen. James Boozer, the deputy commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq. But before the offensive began late Monday, there were reports that the 50 to 60 senior insurgent leaders holed up n...

Blackfive: In yesterday's WashPo Kiki Munshi lets us know about conditions on the ground in Baqubah, Iraq while sunning in California. The writer is a retired Foreign Service officer who returned to duty to lead the provincial reconstruction team in Baqubah, Iraq, from April 2006 until January 2007 JULIAN, Calif. -- Last year at this time, I traveled from Forward Operating Base Warhorse into the Iraqi town of Baqubah several times a week to meet with the governor, the provincial council chairman and other officials. Yes, it was dangerous. But it wasn't suicidal. Today, though, such trips would be almost impossible. Baqubah is a battlefield, the site of a major push against al-Qaeda and other insurgents. The houses that haven't been destroyed are riddled with bullet holes. Many of the Iraqis I worked with are dead, and many others have fled. And yet all last week Michael Yon, who is actually in Baqubah as this happens, is near boredom. MICHAEL YON EMAILS : "Baqub...

Michael Gordon: The enemy was a phantom who never showed his face but transformed a neighborhood into a network of houses rigged to explode. And the soldiers from Comanche Company’s First Platoon confronted this elaborate and deadly trap. The platoon’s push began shortly after 4 a.m. on Saturday, as American forces continued their effort to wrest the western section of this city north of Baghdad from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Tracer rounds zipped through the air as the soldiers fired antitank weapons, mortar shells and machine guns at the abandoned houses they planned to inspect across the street. They calculated that the firepower would blow up any bombs the insurgents might have planted in the houses, while providing cover so the first squads could move south across the thoroughfare. The use of house bombs is not a new trick, but as the soldiers were to learn, the scale was daunting. The entire neighborhood seemed to be a trap. ... But there were a few early indications that the bomb ...

Reuters: U.S. forces believe the initial combat phase of a major offensive to clear al Qaeda from the Iraqi city of Baquba is nearly complete and any militants left could be confronted in the next 24 hours. The operation in and around Baquba, capital of volatile Diyala province, is a major part of one of the biggest combined offensives by U.S. and Iraqi forces against the Sunni Islamist group in Iraq since the invasion of the country in 2003. "We will either make enemy contact quickly, or we won't," Colonel Steve Townsend, commander of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, told Reuters and another news agency late on Saturday. "My company commanders' gut feel is that there won't be a big fight here," he said after a briefing late on Saturday with combat captains in the bombed-out remains of a building, once used by al Qaeda as a clinic, on Baquba's outskirts. Townsend said latest intelligence indicated some fighters were still inside an American cordon, whic...

AP /NY Times: U.S. and Iraqi troops captured two senior al-Qaida militants and seven other operatives Saturday in Diyala province, an Iraqi commander said, as an offensive to clear the volatile area of insurgents entered its fifth day. The U.S. military also cracked down elsewhere in Iraq, saying in a statement that seven other al-Qaida fighters were killed and 10 suspects detained in raids in Tikrit, east of Fallujah, south of Baghdad and in Mosul. Three other militants suspected of having ties to Iran were detained in a predawn operation by U.S. forces working with Iraqi informants in Baghdad's main Shiite district of Sadr City, the military said separately. The Americans have accused Tehran of providing mainly Shiite militias with training and powerful roadside bombs known as explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs, that have killed hundreds of U.S. troops in recent months. ''Coalition forces are determined to counter Iranian influence in Iraq, pursuing those suspected o...

Reuters: Thousands of U.S. soldiers on the offensive north of Baghdad are facing fierce resistance from hundreds of al Qaeda militants who are ready to fight to the death, an American general said on Friday. The militants are making their stand in and around the Iraqi city of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, where the U.S. military on Tuesday launched one of its biggest operations since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. "It is house to house, block to block, street to street, sewer to sewer," said Brigadier-General Mick Bednarek, commander of Operation Arrowhead Ripper in Iraq's Diyala province. ... Bednarek estimated several hundred al Qaeda militants were at Baquba and it would be a long and dangerous job for U.S. forces to flush them out. "They will not go any further. They will fight to the death," Bednarek told Reuters and another news agency. "There have been houses that were used by al Qaeda as safe houses ... their entire structures rigge...

AP: American attack helicopters fired on al-Qaida militants trying to slip past an Iraqi checkpoint on Friday, killing 17 of them in the fourth day of an offensive to oust the fighters entrenched in this city an hour's drive north of Baghdad. More than three-quarters of the city's al-Qaida leadership fled before the Americans moved in to Baqouba this week, U.S. officials said Friday, but not before drone planes spotted fighters planting dozens of roadside bombs on the main highway into the city, capital of volatile and extremely dangerous Diyala province. Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek, assistant commander for operations with the 25th Infantry Division, estimated that several hundred low-level al-Qaida fighters remain. "They're clearly in hiding, no question about it. But they're a hardline group of fighters who have no intention of leaving, and they want to kill as many coalition and Iraqi security forces as they possibly can," Bednarek told The Associated Press ...

Bill Roggio looks as the total scope of operations around Baghdad and Diyala with the clearing operations aimed at al Qaeda. ... The corps level operation is being conducted in three zones in the Baghdad Belts -- Diyala/southern Salahadin, northern Babil province, and eastern Anbar province --- as well as inside Baghdad proper, where clearing operations continue in Sadr City and the Rashid district. Iraqi and Coalition forces are now moving into areas which were ignored in the past and served as safe havens for al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent groups. As the corps level operation is ongoing, Coalition and Iraqi forces are striking at the rogue Iranian backed elements of Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army and continuing the daily intelligence driven raids against al Qaeda's network nationwide. Multinational Division North is leading the offensive in Diyala province and southern Salahadin. The current offensive in Diyala was telegraphed when Multinational Forces Iraq announced the crea...

NY Times: The American military began a major attack against Sunni insurgent positions here in the capital of Diyala Province overnight, part of a larger operation aimed at blunting the persistent car and suicide bombings that have terrorized Iraqis and thwarted political reconciliation. The assault by more than 2,000 American troops is unusual in its scope and ambition, representing a more aggressive strategy of attacking several insurgent strongholds simultaneously to tamp down violence throughout the country. It reflects an acknowledgment that as fresh infusions of American troops focused on Baghdad in recent months, insurgents moved their bases outside the city. The goal, commanders said, was to break the cycle of sectarian killings and retribution that has swept Iraq. The fighting is expected to be hard. In recent months, Diyala has emerged as a center of the Sunni Arab insurgency as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other groups have made it their deadliest base of operations, suppla...

AP /Fox News: U.S. forces rescued 41 Iraqi civilians Sunday from an Al Qaeda hide-out northeast of Baghdad, including some who showed signs of torture and broken bones, a senior U.S. official said. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said it was the largest number of detained Iraqis ever found in a single Al Qaeda hide-out. Some among the 41 had been held as long as four months, he said. ... U.S. forces previously have found a number of houses used by Al Qaeda for detention, including some where prisoners showed signs of torture. But the hide-out raided Sunday in Diyala province was the largest, Caldwell said in a telephone interview. He declined to be more specific about the location, citing security reasons. Caldwell said a tip to U.S. forces from Iraqis in Diyala led to the rescue operation. "The people in Diyala are speaking up against Al Qaeda," he said. Caldwell said U.S. troops have been engaging more directly with Iraqi civilians in...

Bill Roggio: The province of Diyala, where al Qaeda has established its command headquarters over the past year, has been the scene of increased activity of the past several days. Al Qaeda conducted a sophisticated attack in a Kurdish village in the north, and a coordinated attack on a military outpost and a bank in Baqubah. The U.S. detained two al Qaeda leaders in a raid in the city, while the general commanding the 5th Iraqi Army Division was relieved of his command. The recent events signal the Diyala Campaign is on the horizon as both sides seek to consolidate their positions in the province. Today, al Qaeda launched an attack at a U.S. combat outpost in Baqubah, the provincial capital and al Qaeda in Iraq's capital of its political front, the Islamic State of Iraq, according to Al Jazeera . About 50 al Qaeda fighters hit the outpost, ...