Suspected Insurgents Detained - Weapons Caches Found

U. S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces in recent days have continued to detain suspected insurgents and to find and destroy weapons caches, military officials reported.

Soldiers from 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, and Iraqi security forces in the last two days detained several insurgents and confiscated materials useful in building roadside bombs.

Soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, and Iraqi police searched a house and found more than 300 false identification cards, including Iraqi police IDs. During the search, an Iraqi man came to the house to see the owner. After a few minutes of questioning, the man admitted to previously purchasing a false ID card from the homeowner. Both were taken into custody.

On a combined patrol with Iraqi police, 1st BCT soldiers discovered a weapons cache at a home in Kirkuk. An Iraqi emergency services unit had detained the house's owner the day before, after receiving information linking the man to a car-bomb attack. A search yielded several bags of ammunition as well as a large cache of materials for homemade bombs, including rocket-propelled-grenade rounds, C-4 explosive, radios and rolls of electrical wire.

Acting on citizens' tips, Iraqi police raided two houses near Tikrit yesterday and found weapons and explosives. The police secured both sites and called in an explosive ordnance disposal team from Task Force Band of Brothers. The caches included mortar rounds, artillery shells, land mines, a mortar tube, homemade-bomb components and bulk explosives. The police ensured the area was clear of civilians, and the EOD team performed a controlled detonation that destroyed the weapons and both houses.

Task Force Band of Brothers soldiers unearthed a large cache of weapons and explosives at a house south of Tikrit yesterday. At the same house on Feb. 10, soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, found mortar rounds that were being disassembled for use in roadside bombs at the same location and detained the homeowner. When soldiers returned yesterday and conducted a more detailed search of the area, they found aircraft rounds, artillery shells, hand grenades, homemade-bomb components, a sniper rifle, and several thousand rounds of small-arms ammunition. An EOD team determined the cache was too unstable too move. The team cleared the area of civilians and destroyed the weapons and the house in a controlled detonation.

Two off-duty Iraqi soldiers captured two terrorists who were planting a roadside bomb in Kirkuk province March 12 and turned them over to police. An Iraqi explosives unit disposed of the bomb.

In the past three days, Iraqi police captured several individuals involved in terrorist activities in one form or another. Police in the Daquq district captured a member of the Omar Bin Khatab terrorist cell who is known to transport weapons and roadside bombs throughout the region, while police in the Qoria district detained a woman suspected of using her home as a safe haven for terrorists. In another community, children told police of weapons stashed in a nearby trash bin, where police found 18 fuses and more than 20 explosive rounds.
(Above courtesy of DoD - American Forces Press Service and compiled from MNF-I news releases)