<< In the northern city of Mosul, American and Iraqi forces arrested a senior guerilla leader on Saturday, said Maj. Gen. Khalil Ahmed al-Obeidi of the Iraqi Army. The leader, known as Mullah Mahdi, was arrested with his brother, three other Iraqis and a foreign Arab during a brief battle, The Associated Press reported. General Obeidi said Mullah Mahdi had links to the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, one of the most militant groups operating in Iraq, and to the Syrian intelligence service.
"He was wanted for almost all car bombs, assassinations of high officials, beheadings of Iraqi policemen and soldiers, and for launching attacks against the multinational forces," the general said. >> New York Times June 5, 2005 U.S. Uncovers Vast Hide-Out of Iraqi Rebels By EDWARD WONG BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 4 - American marines have discovered an elaborate series of underground bunkers used recently by insurgents in central Iraq, with heavy weapons, a kitchen and fresh food, furnished living quarters, showers and even a working air-conditioner, the military said Saturday. The bunkers were built into an old rock quarry north of the town of Karma, an insurgent stronghold in Anbar Province that lies near the city of Falluja. The bunker system is 558 feet by 902 feet, nearly equal to a quarter of the Empire State Building's office space, making it the largest underground insurgent hide-out to be discovered in at least the past year, if not during the entire war, said Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a spokesman for the Second Marine Division. The military said the bunkers were discovered Thursday around 5 p.m. as part of continuing anti-insurgency operations being conducted in Anbar, a center of the Sunni Arab resistance and an arid province that stretches to Iraq's western border. In the past three days, troops with the Second Marine Division found more than 50 caches of weapons and ammunition in the province. Twelve were discovered in the immediate area of the rock quarry, Captain Pool said in an e-mail interview. "Marines were out patrolling and looking for weapons caches, when out in the middle of the desert they see a lone building," he said. "They went to go and check it out. In one room there was a large, chest-style electric freezer. The marines moved it and found the hidden entrance to the underground quarry system." "I can tell you that it is the largest underground system discovered in at least the last year," he added. Near the building, marines also found evidence of a rifle-training range, including many casings from assault-rifle rounds. No one was in the bunkers at the time of the raid, Captain Pool said. But the fresh food in the kitchen indicated that insurgents had been there recently. The underground lair had been in use for some time, he said, and was built from one subsection of the quarry. In one part of the hide-out, troops discovered machine guns, mortars, rockets, artillery rounds, black uniforms, ski masks, compasses, log books, a video camera, night-vision goggles and fully charged satellite phones, Captain Pool said. The marines were still uncovering "new finds" on Saturday night, the captain said, making it too early to tell exactly what the bunkers were used for or who inhabited them. The insurgents had apparently installed the creature comforts of home within the hide-out. The complex included four fully furnished living spaces, two showers and an air-conditioner, the military said. Temperatures in the deserts of Anbar can approach a scorching 130 degrees in the summertime. Decades ago, Saddam Hussein and his aides began building an extensive series of underground bunkers scattered around Iraq. Mr. Hussein hired German engineers in the 1980's to work on these lairs, which included tunnels and chambers beneath palaces in Baghdad and Mosul. It is not known, however, whether the quarry bunker is part of that network. When United Nations weapons inspectors scoured Iraq in the months before the American invasion, they thoroughly searched many of these bunkers, but came up with nothing. There has been at least one recent instance of Iraqis carving out an underground tunnel. In late March, American soldiers at Camp Bucca, a sprawling prison center in the south, discovered a 600-foot tunnel that ran from beneath the floorboards of a detainee tent to the exterior of the camp, on the other side of a berm. The tunnel ran 12 to 16 feet underground and was dug by detainees using shovels fashioned from thick poles, canvas, a five-gallon water jug and pieces of metal and rope from tents. That tunnel was discovered only after guards spotted a smaller tunnel the previous week. Insurgent attacks in Anbar and elsewhere continued Saturday. A roadside bomb exploded in the center of Falluja at 9 a.m., killing an Iraqi soldier, wounding two others, and damaging several homes, an Interior Ministry official said. Farther north, in Mr. Hussein's hometown, Tikrit, a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at the entrance to an American base, killing at least five Iraqi soldiers and wounding seven others, the official said. Guerrillas also carried out assaults in the capital, where the Iraqi government has been trying to restore order by increasing the number of checkpoints throughout the city and assigning tens of thousands of police and soldiers to the streets in a move called Operation Lightning. In western Baghdad, three men killed a driver near the road to the airport and stuffed a bomb in the trunk of his car, the Interior Ministry official said. When the police arrived on the scene, the bomb exploded, wounding two of the policemen. In the northern city of Mosul, American and Iraqi forces arrested a senior guerilla leader on Saturday, said Maj. Gen. Khalil Ahmed al-Obeidi of the Iraqi Army. The leader, known as Mullah Mahdi, was arrested with his brother, three other Iraqis and a foreign Arab during a brief battle, The Associated Press reported. General Obeidi said Mullah Mahdi had links to the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, one of the most militant groups operating in Iraq, and to the Syrian intelligence service. "He was wanted for almost all car bombs, assassinations of high officials, beheadings of Iraqi policemen and soldiers, and for launching attacks against the multinational forces," the general said. The American military said Saturday that a soldier killed in a rocket attack in Baghdad on Tuesday was from the 807th Signal Company, 35th Signal Battalion. Military spokesmen mistakenly said Friday that the soldier was from the 155th Brigade Combat Team. In the far north, the parliament of the Kurdistan Regional Government held its first meeting since its official appointment during the national elections in January. Members of the parliament were selected through a deal made between the two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The leaders of those two parties, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, attended the meeting on Saturday. Kurdish leaders are bracing for an all-out political struggle with the ruling Shiite Arabs over the definition of federal powers and the administration of Kirkuk, the oil-rich city in the north that the Kurds claim as their own. As the mid-August deadline for the permanent constitution approaches, the Kurds and Arabs will have to negotiate over what autonomous powers Iraqi Kurdistan will retain and whether Kirkuk will fall under its dominion. The governing religious Shiite parties are resistant to notions of broad autonomy for the Kurds. An equally vexing problem for both those groups is how to get the former ruling Sunni Arabs involved in the process of drafting the constitution. A 55-member constitutional committee of the National Assembly is expected to meet Sunday to discuss the issue. The Sunni Arabs, who make up at least a fifth of the population and are largely leading the insurgency, are underrepresented in the assembly because they boycotted the January elections. In Falluja, a bastion of conservative Sunni ideology, tribal leaders and politicians met on Saturday in a conference they called The Unity of Iraq and Its Independence. The meeting took place in a cement factory on the city outskirts, and the leaders agreed on a list of demands to be presented to the American forces and the Iraqi government. The demands include a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops, the release of political prisoners and an end to purges of former Baath Party members. Since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, Falluja and the rest of Anbar Province have proved to be the greatest thorn in the side of the Americans. In recent weeks, the Marines have tried two offensives in the area, first in the city of Qaim near the Syrian border, then in the city of Haditha by a large reservoir. Captain Pool, the Marine spokesman, said that the marines who had been searching for weapons caches in the last three days had mostly been acting on tips provided by local residents, and that "these tips typically come through our tip line because locals are afraid that if they are seen cooperating with marines or the Iraqi security forces, they might be killed." An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Falluja, Iraq, for this article.
