Raids Near Kirkuk Fail to Turn Up Hussein Loyalist

Up to 500 Iraqi security officers backed by more than 1,000 U.S. troops carried out a series of massive raids near the northern city of Kirkuk on Tuesday as the search for alleged insurgency leader Izzat Ibrahim continued, defense officials said.

More than two dozen suspected guerrilla fighters were apprehended in the large-scale sweeps in Hawija, a town about 30 miles west of Kirkuk, that began around 4 a.m. and lasted until after nightfall. But U.S. officials dismissed reports that Ibrahim was among those detained.

An unusually large force from the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade accompanied the Iraqi police and members of the nation’s new Civil Defense Corps on the raids, said Master Sgt. Robert Cargie, a spokesman for Task Force Iron Horse, which is being led by the 4th Infantry Division.

Standing in front of her house this morning in Hawija, Shamsa Abbas Hmoud, 38, talked about the raid.

“Between 25 and 30 GIs stormed my house yesterday,” she said. “They searched the house thoroughly and arrested my husband,” Sami Hmoud, 39, and a visiting friend, Imad Muhsen, 30.

She said they took Hmoud’s Kalashnikov rifle and covered his and Muhsen’s faces with plastic bags. “My children were shouting and screaming,” she said.

Troops sealed off the town overnight. Journalists were allowed in this morning just as the last two tanks left. The military said 26 people were arrested, three of them targets of the raids and all of them suspected Fedayeen Saddam fighters loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein.

But Hawija residents said they counted about 40 people arrested, including a secretary to Ibrahim. None were identified by name.

Military officials in Tikrit said troops seized 62 AK-47s, two roadside bombs and a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher. No gunfire was reported.

Military officials said the raids were based on intelligence reports suggesting that Fedayeen Saddam fighters had gathered in Kirkuk. U.S. efforts against insurgents, which until recently had been focused in the so-called Sunni Triangle stretching from Baghdad west to Fallouja and north to Tikrit, have now expanded northward to Kirkuk and Mosul.

Last week, Ibrahim’s wife and daughter were arrested near Samarra, not far from Tikrit, and 4th Infantry Division officials had said they hoped to glean intelligence on the ex-general’s whereabouts from them.

Initial reports from the Iraqi Governing Council said Ibrahim, one of Hussein’s closest aides, had been captured or killed in Tuesday’s operations.

But Task Force Iron Horse officials later said Ibrahim was not among those arrested.

The Pentagon has announced a $10-million reward for the capture, dead or alive, of Ibrahim.

Army Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, said recently that intelligence reports indicated that Ibrahim, the most-wanted former regime leader other than Hussein, was financing or possibly even directing attacks that U.S. military officials acknowledged had become increasingly coordinated.

Iraqi insurgents set off a roadside bomb Tuesday south of Samarra, killing a U.S. soldier in a Humvee, the military reported.

On Sunday, Samarra was the site of the biggest urban street fight in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad; military officials said 54 insurgents were killed after they launched bold, simultaneous attacks on U.S. military convoys. Locals said the casualties were far fewer.

Eleven insurgents were detained in Sunday’s clashes, and by Tuesday the task force had arrested 20 more suspected anti-coalition fighters in the area. But areas farther north, where attacks appear to have intensified, were also drawing increasing attention from the U.S. military.

In Baiji, 25 miles north of Tikrit, soldiers from the 173rd Airborne were ambushed during a patrol Monday by attackers lined up along both sides of a road.

The assailants fired at least eight rocket-propelled grenades and directed small-arms fire at the soldiers, who were patrolling in Humvees, said Army Lt. Col. William MacDonald, a senior spokesman for the task force.

None of the grenades hit their mark, and no U.S. soldiers were killed, MacDonald said. There was no word on enemy casualties.

Several miles west of Kirkuk, an AH-64 Apache helicopter crew killed three men who ignored an order to drop their automatic weapons and turned their guns toward the chopper late Monday, MacDonald said.

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Times staff writer Hendren reported from Tikrit and special correspondent Zedan from Hawija.