Al Qaeda Routed And Villagers Return To Kanan Area
Joint Operations featuring Coalition Soldiers and Iraqi National Army forces have been very successful. This week has seen 16 terrorists killed and 10 captured, in a week of intense fighting. The fighting seems to be for the most part wrapped up, and peace and calm is beginning to settle in the area. The area northwest of Samarra has been stubbornly resisting the efforts of Coalition forces to rid itself of Al Qaeda forces.
An associate of Al Qaeda was arrested north of Tarmiyah, a suspect that is alleged to have been involved in as many as a dozen recent attacks against U.S. and Coalition troops. A member of a special groups terror cell who is Iranian was also captured in the series of raids during the last week.
Security forces of both Iraq and Coalition troops moved together in the Arab Jabour region on Thursday and captured a larges weapons cache previously missed in searches of the area. A young Iraqi boy led soldiers to the cache, which included hundreds of pounds of explosives, mortar rounds, hand held grenade launchers and IED Devices.
One of the weapons found in the large Arab Jabour cache included a quantity of C-4 explosives, and other bomb making parts. The cache was cleverly concealed in a small building that had been searched previously and was located where 4 other caches had been turned over.
A trap door was discovered in the floor by children playing, and led to one young boy reporting the cache to members of Coalition troops nearby.
