MOSUL: Police in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul said yesterday one of its units ambushed and killed three members of a cell loyal to Al Qaeda’s frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
“One of our units trapped the members of the cell and had a skirmish with them in the Nour district, in the east of Mosul at around 10am (0600 GMT),” said General Abdul Aziz Juburi, the chief of Ninive province’s interim police force.
“The chief of the cell, Mohamed Saleh Sultan, alias Abu Zubair, was among those killed,” he said without adding whether or not the police suffered any casualties during the operation.
Meanwhile, seven Iraqis were killed and several others wounded in insurgent attacks yesterday, police and military sources said.
Three civilians and a soldier were killed in a shootout between gunmen and a joint US-Iraqi military patrol in the central city of Samarra, which was recaptured from insurgents in a US-backed offensive late last year, police said.
A civilian was killed and two others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their car just north of Samarra, an Iraqi army officer said.
A Kurdish interpeter working for the US military was shot dead when gunmen fired at his car in the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, police said. Another person in the vehicle was seriously wounded, they added.
And a driver working for the US-financed television station Al Hurra was shot dead in front of his home in a south Baghdad neighborhood, a defence ministry source reported. The gunmen fled on foot. – AFP