Troops Launch Major Combat Operation in Iraq

Car Bomb Kills 4 Near Shiite Mosque

BAGHDAD, June 17 -- About 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops mounted a fresh assault on insurgents early Friday on the border with Syria, the U.S. military announced.

The push by Marines and sailors with Regimental Combat Team 2 of the 2nd Marine Division, in tandem with Iraqi soldiers, "began in the early morning hours aimed at rooting out terrorists, foreign fighters and disrupting terrorist support systems in and around Karabilah," according to a Marine statement.

No further details about the assault, dubbed Operation Spear, were released.

Karabilah, about three miles from the border, is one of a handful of Euphrates River towns where U.S. commanders say foreigners are being funneled from Syria into Iraq to fight the country's new government and the foreign forces that protect it. On Saturday, the Marines launched airstrikes against insurgents who had erected illegal checkpoints along local roads and were menacing civilians, according to military spokesmen who estimated that the attack killed 40 insurgents.

Last month, a major U.S. assault called Operation Matador swept through towns in the same region. Marines searched homes and patrolled roads in an effort to disrupt what commanders have described as a complex insurgent network that trains foreign fighters and moves them to all corners of Iraq. In many towns, however, Marines found mostly women, children and the elderly, along with signs that insurgents had recently fled.

In Baghdad on Friday, a car bomb killed four persons near a Shiite Muslim mosque on the city's east side. A black Daewoo driven by a suicide attacker exploded about 50 yards from the mosque, igniting a nearby fuel tanker, said a witness, Abbas Abid, 25.

Police said the bombing was a suicide attack intended to kill worshipers leaving the mosque after Friday prayers. But several people at the scene said they thought the driver was targeting a passing police convoy.

In addition, the Associated Press reported that a suicide car bomber hit an Iraqi army convoy in northern Iraq, injuring seven people.

Since Iraq's Shiite-led government took office in late April, insurgents have conducted scores of attacks calculated to enflame tensions between the country's disparate religious, ethnic and political groups.

Special correspondent Bassam Sebti contributed to this report.