- American soldiers killed an Iraqi woman when they blew
up the door of a house during a raid in a town near Iraq's border with
Syria.
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- "Forces encountered resistance to entry in one target
location and used a door breaching charge to gain access to the target
through a reinforced steel door.
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- The blast resulted in the death of one Iraqi female and
injuries to two other females in the house," the US military said
in a statement on Monday.
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- It added that the incident, which occurred in the western
town of Rawa, was under investigation.
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- The US Third Armoured Cavalry Regiment (3rd ACR) kicked
off "Operations Rifles Fury" in Rawa, a mission aimed "to
kill or capture anti-coalition forces and destroy terrorist training camps".
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- The occupation forces carried out 17 raids on Sunday
and detained 81 people. Eleven of them were considered "high value
targets".
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- The raid was part of a nationwide dragnet aimed at capturing
resistance activists.
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- In the province of Anbar, the military said it had arrested
96 "terrorists" on Sunday.
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- In Falluja, 50km west of Baghdad, the 82nd Airborne Division
carried out seven "cordon-and-search" operations and arrested
14 people involved in "financing and recruiting foreign fighters".
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- Ex-officer nabbed
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- In another success, US occupation forces have arrested
a former top officer in Saddam Hussein's security services, suspected of
directing anti-American attacks north of Baghdad, US officers said on Monday.
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- The man, a major-general in the former Iraqi intelligence
department, was detained during overnight searches in Baquba, 65km north
of Baghdad, they said.
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- Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard
Myers, said hundreds of Iraqis, including some resistance leaders, had
been arrested following the capture of ousted leader Saddam Hussein.
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- Myers also said Saddam was not cooperating with US authorities
who had been interrogating him since he was caught on 13 December near
his hometown of Tikrit.
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- Myers told the TV programme Fox News on Sunday: "We've
put our best interrogators on him. The only word I have is that he is not
being cooperative."
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- He told CNN television that some of the information had
come from the briefcase seized when US forces found Saddam hiding in a
hole under a farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit.
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- US troops have been cracking down on anti-occupation
fighters in the week since Saddam was captured, although top officials
have warned that resistance was expected to continue.
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- Resistance fighters have killed 200 US soldiers since
US President George Bush announced an end to major combat on 1 May.
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- Insight on resistance
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- Myers, who paid a surprise visit to Baghdad last week,
said he did not have a precise count of those detained "because it
goes on."
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- "Some of the information gleaned when we picked
up Saddam Hussein led to a better understanding of the structure of the
resistance from the former regime elements and we have actually picked
up more than several hundred at this point," Myers said.
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- Myers was later quoted as saying there had been "over
200 people detained based on that intelligence, probably more to come."
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- Details of capture
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- More details have emerged about the circumstances of
Saddam's arrest on 13 December.
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- A tribal chief in the northern Iraqi village of al-Dawr
where Saddam was captured claimed the ousted leader hid in the same farm
where he had sought refuge as a young man in 1959 after a botched assassination
attempt on then head of state Abd al-Karim Qasim.
- Shaikh Hassib Shahib Ahmad, head of the al-Muwasat
tribe, said the farm belonged to Qaiss Namach Jassam, the son of Jassam
Namach who sheltered Saddam 44 years ago, before he fled Iraq after the
failed murder attempt.
- "Namach was offering the customary hospitality
of the Arabs to a man who was wounded and in danger," he said.
- Qaiss and his brothers were arrested after Saddam's
capture by US troops, said the shaikh.
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- Agencies
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