Iraqi Police

RAMADI, Iraq -- For almost a week, American and Iraqi troops had prepared for this moment. Working through rainy days and nights, they had laid out wire, put up blast walls and established sniper positions against another attack. Now all they could do was wait. After a suicide bomber killed two U.S. troops and scores of Iraqi recruits outside these factory gates a week earlier, would local Sunni Arabs come back to sign up for police jobs or would they stay away? A little after 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Qassan Ashar Ali and his brother Omar made their way past three checkpoints, two bomb-sniffing dogs and an X-ray truck, and became the first recruits to enter the glass factory in Ramadi after the recent bombing.

S aad Maan al-Mosawi came all the way from Baghdad to Baltimore to learn how Americans police their cities, and here is one of the first questions he posed to a top department official: "Do you have community policing in Baltimore?" It's not an easy question to answer. After years of cops believing that wholesale arrests were the way out of an epidemic of violence, Baltimore police returned to community policing with neighborhood walks and more outreach to help regain the trust of a distrustful citizenry.

RAMADI, Iraq -- As U.S. troops mount a concentrated effort to clear insurgents from Ramadi this summer, they have joined with Iraqi forces in a delicate campaign to flush fighters from a culturally sensitive haven: the city's mosques. Not only are religious sites protected under international treaty, but Iraqis are particularly touchy about non-Muslims entering a mosque. Americans cannot search them without alienating the very population they are trying to win over. But it long has been a truism of this war that the enemy hides where U.S. forces do not go. Now U.S. troops have come up with a solution: using Iraqi police to enter the holy sites.

RAMADI, Iraq - As Iraqi officials and the U.S. military haggle over when to let Anbar province take control of its own security, a row of broken-down Ford pickups in a Ramadi schoolyard offers a sobering picture of the readiness of the region's security forces. The U.S. military gave the vehicles to the police stationed in a former school here, but the Iraqi government hasn't provided parts or a maintenance system to keep them running. The cops work on their own vehicles, picking parts from the junkers.

BAGHDAD -- Seven inmates were killed yesterday when mortar shells slammed into an Iraqi Interior Ministry jail in the capital, Iraqi security officials said. A few miles south, fire broke out at one of Iraq's main oil refineries, a possible case of sabotage. There were conflicting reports about the cause of the blaze, but police said a Katyusha rocket hit a gas tanker. More than 450 attacks have been carried out against Iraq's oil installations or industry employees since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to analysts who monitor security issues related to energy.

BAGHDAD -- Mystery and dread shrouded a freshly discovered mass grave site filled with the remains of at least 50 and perhaps as many as 100 people, some of them children, in a river valley northeast of Baghdad. Iraqi police announced the discovery yesterday after conducting a raid in the area and stumbling upon the badly decomposed bodies a day earlier. The dead were buried in one of the many fruit, date and palm orchards that line the Diyala River near the town of Khalis, just north of the provincial capital of Baqouba.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi soldiers arrested a high-ranking federal police official yesterday on suspicion of targeting Sunni Arabs in the capital for arrest and torture on behalf of radical Shiite militias, as well as for ransom. The arrest underscored the country's deep sectarian divisions and concerns over the degree to which extremist groups have infiltrated Iraqi institutions responsible for protecting the public. Col. Thamir Mohammed Ismail Husseini, known as Abu Turab, was the intelligence officer for the 2nd National Police Division Headquarters.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- Two suicide bombers wearing explosive belts killed at least 16 police officers in an attack on the Iraqi Interior Ministry yesterday during a ceremony to honor Iraqi police. Attending the ceremony were U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad, the Iraqi ministers of interior and defense and other officials. They escaped unharmed. Meanwhile, Iraqi and U.S. security forces were searching for an American woman journalist abducted over the weekend by armed men in Sunni-dominated western Baghdad.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide bomber strapped with explosives killed at least 60 recruits lining up to join the police force yesterday in the Kurdish city of Irbil, piling pressure onto Iraq's shaky new government to address the spiraling insurgent violence. Later in the day, at least nine Iraqi soldiers were killed and 16 wounded when a suicide bomber attacked a checkpoint in Baghdad, the Associated Press reported, quoting Iraqi police. However, the U.S. military said as many as 15 Iraqis died in the attack in the Doura neighborhood.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -Ten Sunni Muslim tribesmen died while American-trained Iraqi police commandos kept them in an airtight container for more than six hours in 115-degree heat, outraged Sunni clerics and politicians charged yesterday. Iraqi authorities launched an investigation into the deaths and suspended three top officers from the commando unit involved, an Interior Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. U.S. officials said they had no information on what had taken place. No American soldiers were involved in the incident.

BAGHDAD -- An assault by thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police officers to regain control of the southern port city of Basra stalled yesterday as Shiite militiamen in the Mahdi Army fought daylong hit-and-run battles and refused to withdraw from the neighborhoods that form their base of power there. American officials have presented the Iraqi army's attempts to secure the port city as an example of its ability to carry out a major operation against the insurgency on its own. A failure there would be a serious embarrassment for the Iraqi government and for the army, as well as for American forces eager to demonstrate that the Iraqi units they have trained can fight effectively on their own. During a briefing in Baghdad yesterday, a British military official said that of the nearly 30,000 Iraqi security forces involved in the assault, almost 16,000 were Basra police forces, which have long been suspected of being infiltrated by the same militias the assault was intended to root out. The operation is a significant political test for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who traveled to Basra to oversee the beginning of the assault.

BAGHDAD -- Mystery and dread shrouded a freshly discovered mass grave site filled with the remains of at least 50 and perhaps as many as 100 people, some of them children, in a river valley northeast of Baghdad. Iraqi police announced the discovery yesterday after conducting a raid in the area and stumbling upon the badly decomposed bodies a day earlier. The dead were buried in one of the many fruit, date and palm orchards that line the Diyala River near the town of Khalis, just north of the provincial capital of Baqouba.

BAGHDAD -- Iraqi police officials have dropped plans to disarm policewomen and give their guns to male officers after an outcry from critics, who said the move was a sign of religious zealots' rising influence in Iraq. Despite the turnabout, which police confirmed yesterday, the U.S. military general who introduced women into the police force said they remained hindered in their attempts to practice real policing skills. "Even with the revocation order, we will have to watch very closely the actions taken in regards to the remaining female Iraqi police," said U.S. Army Brig.

BAGHDAD -- Seven inmates were killed yesterday when mortar shells slammed into an Iraqi Interior Ministry jail in the capital, Iraqi security officials said. A few miles south, fire broke out at one of Iraq's main oil refineries, a possible case of sabotage. There were conflicting reports about the cause of the blaze, but police said a Katyusha rocket hit a gas tanker. More than 450 attacks have been carried out against Iraq's oil installations or industry employees since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to analysts who monitor security issues related to energy.

BAGHDAD -- Sunni Arab extremists have begun a systematic campaign to assassinate police chiefs, police officers, other Interior Ministry officials and tribal leaders throughout Iraq, staging at least 10 attacks in 48 hours. Eight policemen have been killed, among them the police chief of Baqouba, the largest city in Diyala province. Two other police chiefs survived attacks, though one was left in critical condition, and about 30 police officers were wounded, according to reports from local security officers.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi soldiers arrested a high-ranking federal police official yesterday on suspicion of targeting Sunni Arabs in the capital for arrest and torture on behalf of radical Shiite militias, as well as for ransom. The arrest underscored the country's deep sectarian divisions and concerns over the degree to which extremist groups have infiltrated Iraqi institutions responsible for protecting the public. Col. Thamir Mohammed Ismail Husseini, known as Abu Turab, was the intelligence officer for the 2nd National Police Division Headquarters.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. officials are doling out millions of dollars of arms and ammunition to Iraqi police units without safeguards required to ensure they are complying with American laws that ban taxpayer-financed assistance for foreign security forces engaged in human-rights violations, according to an internal State Department review. The previously undisclosed review shows that officials failed to take steps to comply with the laws over the past two years, amid mounting reports of torture and murder by Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces.

KARBALA, Iraq -- A confrontation between American troops and supporters of a militant Shiite cleric eased yesterday after U.S. forces withdrew from around a house formerly used by the Muslim leader and handed over control of the area to Iraqi police. The troops, who had surrounded the house and several nearby buildings Saturday, pulled back after an early morning raid, neighbors said. The Americans apparently searched the buildings for the cleric, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hassani, and his supporters, who are accused of killing three American soldiers in a shootout last week.

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BAGHDAD, Iraq -- At least 20 mortar rounds and Katyusha rockets struck the fortified Green Zone yesterday afternoon, killing an American service member and two other people in an attack on the heart of U.S. and Iraqi government facilities in the capital. An Iraqi and a third person of unknown nationality also were killed in the attack, according to a statement released by the U.S. Embassy. About 18 people were injured, including two U.S. military personnel and three American contract employees, the statement said.