Baghdad, Iraq – U.S. and Iraqi forces pushed deeper Thursday into Sunni militant strongholds in Baghdad – where cars rigged with explosives greeted their advance – while British-led teams in southern Iraq used shipping containers to block suspected weapon-smuggling routes from Iran.
Early today, an Interior Ministry spokesman said the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was wounded in a clash Thursday with Iraqi forces north of Baghdad. But the deputy interior minister said he had no information about such a clash, and two U.S. officials couldn’t confirm the report.
The series of car-bomb blasts, which killed at least seven civilians, touched all corners of Baghdad. But it did little to disrupt a security sweep seeking to weaken militia groups’ ability to fight U.S.-allied forces – and each other – as Iraq slips further into factional bloodshed.
No troops were injured in the Baghdad attacks, but they pointed to the critical struggle to gain the upper hand on the capital’s streets. The Pentagon hopes its current campaign of arrests and arms seizures will convince average Iraqis that militiamen are losing ground. Yet each explosion is another reminder of the militants’ resources and resolve.
The announcement about the wounding of al-Masri came from Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf. He said the clash occurred near Balad, a major U.S. base about 50 miles north of Baghdad.
Al-Masri took over the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq after its charismatic leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in June.
After nightfall Thursday in Baghdad, U.S. warplanes flew low over the city in an apparent attempt to show that the security push is gathering momentum.
Anwar Abdullah, a supermarket owner in western Baghdad, said the push is doomed for failure because most of the militants fled the city in advance.
“It sounds like this security plan is going to affect us more than it will affect terrorists,” he said.
In southern Iraq, British and Iraqi security forces closed two border points with Iran at Sheeb and Shalamcha – blocking the gates with large metal shipping containers – and expanded coastal patrols to monitor maritime traffic into southern Iraq.
