US launches major assault in Iraq

US forces and the Iraqi army today launched what was termed the largest air assault since the US-led invasion, targeting insurgent strongholds north of the capital.

"More than 1,500 Iraqi and Coalition troops, over 200 tactical vehicles, and more than 50 aircraft participated in the operation," the military statement said. The attack was designed to "clear a suspected insurgent operating area northeast of Samarra" - 60 miles north of Baghdad.

The military said the operation was expected to continue over several days against insurgent targets in Salahuddin province, where Samarra is a key city.

The assault was launched just hours before Iraq's new parliament was sworn behind the concrete blast walls of the heavily fortified Green Zone - with parties still deadlocked over the next government, vehicles banned from Baghdad's streets to prevent car bombings and the country under the shadow of a feared civil war.

The long-expected first session, which took place within days of the third anniversary of the US-led invasion, lasted just 40 minutes and was adjourned indefinitely because there still was no agreement on a permanent speaker for the legislature and his deputies.

Salahuddin province is a major part of the so-called Sunni triangle where insurgents have been active since shortly after the invasion. Saddam Hussein was captured in the province, not far from its capital, Tikrit. On Feb. 22, bombers destroyed an important Shiite shrine in the city, triggering a wave of sectarian killing that has claimed hundreds of lives.

Waqas al-Juwanya, a spokesman for the provincial government's joint coordination center in nearby Dowr, said "unknown gunmen exist in this area, killing and kidnapping policemen, soldiers and civilians."

Near the end of the first day of the operation, the military said, a number of weapons caches had been captured, containing artillery shells, explosives, bomb-making materials, and military uniforms.

It said the attack began with soldiers from the Iraqi Army's 1st Brigade, 4th Division, the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team and the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade conducting a combined air and ground assault to isolate the targeted area.

Air power backed the operation and delivered troops from the Iraq Army's 4th Division, the Rakkasans from 1st and 3rd Battalions, 187th Infantry Regiment and the Hunters from 2nd Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment to multiple objectives.

The military said forces from the 2nd Commando Brigade then completed a ground infiltration to secure numerous structures in the area. There was no immediate word on casualties.

In Baghdad, Adnan Pachachi, the senior politician who administered the oath in the absence of a speaker of parliament, spoke of a country in crisis.

"We have to prove to the world that a civil war is not and will not take place among our people," Pachachi told lawmakers. "The danger is still looming and the enemies are ready for us because they do not like to see a united, strong, stable Iraq."

As Pachachi spoke, he was interrupted from the floor by senior Shiite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who said the remarks were inappropriate because of their political nature.

Even the oath was a source of disagreement, with the head of the committee that drafted the country's new constitution, Humam Hammoudi, protesting that lawmakers had strayed from the text. After brief consultations, judicial officials agreed the wording was acceptable and the session adjourned until further notice.

Acting Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari told reporters after the brief session, "If politicians work seriously, we can have a government within a month."

Al-Jaafari's candidacy for a second term as prime minister is at the center of the political logjam that delayed parliament's first session for over a month after the results of Dec. 15 elections were approved.

Under the constitution, the largest parliamentary bloc, controlled by Shiites, has the right to nominate the prime minister. Al-Jaafari won the Shiite nomination by a single vote last month.

Politicians involved in the negotiations have said part of the Shiite bloc, those aligned with al-Hakim, would like to see al-Jaafari ousted but fear the consequences, given his backing from radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and al-Sadr's thousands-strong Mahdi Army.

Sunni, Kurdish and some secular Shiites argue al-Jaafari is too divisive and accuse him of not doing enough to contain waves of revenge killing after bombers destroyed the Shiite shrine in Samarra and ripped apart teeming markets in an al-Sadr stronghold in Baghdad on Sunday.

US officials have been pressing political leaders to reach agreement on a national unity government, under which the country's majority Shiite Muslims would share Cabinet posts equitably with minority Sunnis and Kurds.

The Americans see that as the best opportunity for blunting the Sunni-driven insurgency that has ravaged the country since 2003. If a strong central government were in place, Washington had hoped to start removing some troops by summer.

Parliament's inaugural session started the clock on a 60-day period in which parliament must elect a president and approve a prime minister and Cabinet.

Hours after the session adjourned, two mortar shells were fired into the Green Zone, said al-Mohammedawi, the Interior Ministry official. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Police discovered 29 more bodies discarded in various parts of Baghdad late Wednesday and Thursday. The victims were all men, some with their hands bound, who had been shot execution-style and dumped in both Shiite and Sunni Muslim neighborhoods, said Interior Ministry official Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi.

North of the capital, a roadside bomb exploded near a girl's primary school near Baqouba, killing three students aged 12-13 and injuring two others, police said.

Another bomb missed a US patrol in Mosul, killing one civilian and wounding three others, police said. Four more people were killed in a drive-by shooting in the city.

In Ramadi, residents picked through the rubble of a home they said was destroyed in a US raid. Residents have reported repeated clashes in the city in an insurgent-plagued area west of Baghdad.

Recent AP Television News video showed a gunbattle in which a gasoline truck was set on fire, and at a separate location the killing of an unidentified man with heavy gunfire audible in the background. The US military has not responded to repeated requests for information.

Parliament's first meeting coincided with the anniversary of a poison gas attack by Saddam Hussein's army on the northern city of Halabja 18 years ago. Nearly 2,000 Kurdish demonstrators, angry over what they see as the regional government's failure to rebuild the area, went on a rampage Thursday and badly damaged a monument to the 5,000 residents killed. Police fired live ammunition into the air, killing one person and wounding at least eight.

Saddam ordered the poison gas attack as part of a scorched-earth campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq. Current President Jalal Talabani, a former Kurdish guerrilla leader, said Thursday, "the Halabja anniversary inspires us to continue our struggle against dictatorship."

South of Samarra on Wednesday, a US airstrike killed 11 people — most of them women and children, said police and relatives of the victims. The US military said it captured the target of the raid, a man suspected of supporting foreign fighters of the al-Qaida in Iraq terror network.

But the military said it could only account for four people killed — a man, two women and a child. "That doesn't meant that we dispute 11," said Maj. Tim Keefe, a military spokesman.

He said the suspect was captured as he fled the house, but US troops were taking fire from the building and called in an airstrike. He did not specify whether the strike near Balad, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad, involved warplanes or gunships.

AP photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other blanketed figures arriving at a hospital in nearby Tikrit, accompanied by grief-stricken relatives.