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Ex-insurgents attack al-Qaida

Iraqi police say 18 members of al-Qaida in Iraq are killed in an ambush by Sunni fighters.

BAGHDAD - Former Sunni insurgents asked the United States to stay away, then ambushed members of al-Qaida in Iraq, killing 18 in a battle that raged for hours north of Baghdad, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said Saturday.

The Islamic Army in Iraq sent advance word to Iraqi police requesting that U.S. helicopters keep out of the area since its fighters had no uniforms and were indistinguishable from al-Qaida, according to the police and a top Islamic Army leader known as Abu Ibrahim.

Abu Ibrahim said his fighters killed 18 al-Qaida militants and captured 16 in the fight southeast of Samarra, a mostly Sunni city about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

"We found out that al-Qaida intended to attack us, so we ambushed them at 3 p.m. on Friday," Abu Ibrahim said. He would not say whether any Islamic Army members were killed.

Much of the Islamic Army in Iraq, a major Sunni Arab insurgent group that includes former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, has joined the U.S.-led fight against al-Qaida in Iraq along with Sunni tribesmen and other former insurgents repelled by the terror group's brutality and extremism.

So-called awakening councils have sprouted up in communities across Iraq, where members swear allegiance to Iraq's U.S.-backed government and disavow militants. U.S. officials say the councils have been key to tamping violence in recent months.

The backlash against al-Qaida among Iraq's Sunni Arab community began in Iraq's western Anbar province last year. Americans recruited Sunni sheiks to help oust al-Qaida from their home turf, and the movement spread to former militants who once fought the United States and Iraq.

Along with a U.S. force buildup of 30,000 troops, the Sunni fighters are credited with wresting neighborhoods back from the terror network - yielding a sharp drop in violence here in recent months.

The top commander for U.S. forces in the Middle East, Navy Adm. William Fallon, said Friday that a grass roots shift among Iraqis - both Sunni and Shiite - against insurgents in their midst has been critical to the improvement. "Over the last year, many people in Iraq, I believe, have gotten fed up with the extremists on both sides," Fallon said.

"The situation has dramatically improved in the last five months in particular," he said. Some 50,000 Iraqis have signed up to be what the military calls "concerned local citizens" in a project Fallon compared to a neighborhood watch program.

Meanwhile, farther east, in Diyala province, members of another former insurgent group, the 1920s Revolution Brigades, launched a military-style operation Saturday against al-Qaida in Iraq there, the Iraqi Army said.

About 60 militants were captured and handed over to Iraqi soldiers, an army officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to the media.

Afterward, hundreds of people paraded through the streets of Buhriz, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, witnesses said. Many danced and fired their guns into the air, shouting "Down with al-Qaida!" and "Diyala is for all Iraqis!"

And at Baghdad's most revered Sunni shrine, the Abu Hanifa mosque, voices blasted from loudspeakers Saturday urging residents to turn against al-Qaida.

The latest

- Soldier killed: The U.S. military announced the death of an American soldier, killed a day earlier in an explosion in Diyala. Three others were wounded in the blast, it said.

-Civilian toll: Twenty people were killed or found dead across Iraq, including four civilians who died on minibuses hit by roadside bombs on their way to work, police said. One explosion, which missed the passing police patrol that was apparently its target, struck a minibus, killing two people in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad.

Fast facts

Iraq developments

Soldier killed: The U.S. military announced the death of an American soldier, killed Friday in an explosion in Diyala. Three others were wounded in the blast, it said.

New violence: Twenty people were killed or found dead across Iraq, including four civilians who died on minibuses hit by roadside bombs on their way to work, police said. One explosion, which missed the passing police patrol that was apparently its target, struck a minibus, killing two people in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad.

[Last modified November 11, 2007, 02:42:37]