An Iraqi official said Wednesday that security forces had captured a "key leader" of a Mosul-based terrorist group affiliated with Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who has asserted responsibility for numerous attacks in Iraq and has pledged allegiance to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The Mosul leader was identified as Abu Marwan, a 33-year-old Iraqi who government officials said in a statement was responsible for commanding terror operations in the city, purchasing weapons for the Abu Talha group and coordinating the training of members of various terrorist cells.
A crowd gathers around the site of Tuesday night's explosion in Baghdad. Officials said insurgents lured police officers by firing shots from the house.
(Hadi Mizban -- AP)
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"Concerned Iraqi citizens provided critical information to security forces on the location of the terrorist leader, who surrendered without resistance," the statement said.
At the scene of the massive explosion in Baghdad, neighbors said a group of Arab men had moved into the house four days ago.
Khalid Ahmad, a pickup truck driver, said one of his neighbors approached the house at about noon Tuesday to greet the new occupants. The occupants responded by firing two bullets into the air, turning the man away, said Ahmad, who lives nearby. Ahmad said the man then went to the police and informed on the occupants.
About 10 that night, three police cars approached the house from the front and back, and officers used loudspeakers to order the occupants to come out, witnesses said. The occupants shot at the police officers, and as they stormed the house, it blew up.
Officers who had climbed the walls of neighboring buildings and those who stormed the house died instantly. The force of the blast threw some of their bodies 100 feet, said Fareed Ghaeyeb, 28, who works as a trader in the nearby Shula market. "I saw and then helped in removing three torn bodies of policemen who had approached the front of the house," he said.
Kareem Ashour, 41, a minibus driver whose house is about five doors from the site of the explosion, said he heard the officers calling out through the loudspeakers, and "then there was firing and a loud explosion that shook the whole house."
Ashour said a family of 13 that lived next to the exploded house was buried under debris. Rescue workers retrieved the bodies of five adults and four children, the youngest of whom was 5.
The attack came at the end of a deadly day for Iraqi security forces. At least 26 police officers and National Guardsmen were killed Tuesday in attacks at checkpoints, police stations and convoys elsewhere in Iraq. Most of those attacks took place in the area known as the Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad. Thirteen Iraqi police officers were shot execution-style in a station just south of Tikrit, a U.S. military spokesman said.
The area of Baghdad where the house blew up is a low-income residential neighborhood with unpaved roads still muddy from the rain that fell on Christmas. Water pooled in the street, and to reach the site, people had to wade through it. The neighborhood is occupied mostly by former Iraqi soldiers and traders.
Mohammad Jawad, 38, a sergeant in the disbanded Republican Guard who now drives a private bus, said that about two months ago neighbors noticed masked men driving around. "A few days ago I heard that the house was rented by some Arabs," he said. "One of them was Sudanese, for sure."
Afraid that the new occupants would cause trouble, one of the neighbors decided to check up on them, Jawad said. "He was welcomed with two bullets fired near his feet," he said.
Ashour said the area had always been peaceful, even as violence rocked other parts of the capital.
Residents include both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, who apparently have never had problems. This may have been why insurgents chose to live there, neighbors speculated.
Staff writer Josh White in Amman, Jordan, and special correspondents Khalid Saffar in Baghdad and Roaa Ahmad in Mosul contributed to this report.
