Iraq Watch: January 27, 2006

Street Battles Rage in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A series of intense street battles raged in southwest Baghdad Friday, as Iraqi police launched raids against suspected insurgent safe havens. The firefights, which left at least three civilians dead, occurred in the capital city's southwestern suburbs of Jihad and Saydiyah.

The area was left deserted as militants and Iraqi police exchanged bursts gunfire. U.S. military helicopters hovered overhead as militants set up sniper positions and scurried through the districts' numerous alleyways according to the AP. Iraqi police announced that the raids netted 60 or so suspects.

Meanwhile, the Arabic-language channel Al-Jazeera aired a videotape it said it obtained from a previously unknown militant group calling itself "Ansar al-Tawhid wa al-Sunnah" (Supporters of monotheism and Sunnah) depicting two German engineers (Thomas Nitzschke and Rene Braeunlich) who were abducted Tuesday in the northern city of Beiji.

Elsewhere Friday, Mohammed al-Waeli, the provincial governor of the southern, predominately-Shiite city Basra, threatened to sever ties with British forces stationed in the area unless those apprehended in a Tuesday raid were immediately released. The British military on Tuesday, along with Danish forces, launched a series of raids throughout Basra arresting at least 14 people, including several senior ranking officers in the city's police department, who they said were allied to closely with local militias.

Shortly after the governor's announcement a bomb exploded in a Basra marketplace killing at least one and injuring three. Witnesses to the blast told the AP a man riding in a police vehicle placed the explosive device in the market.

In other violence around Iraq Friday, two Iraqi policemen were killed and four wounded when a roadside bomb exploded next to their patrol. A subsequent blast in the city killed one Iraqi civilian and injured two additional Iraqi police.

South of the capital, in Youssifiyah, two Iraqi civilians were killed in an IED explosion aimed at a passing U.S. military patrol.