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Al-Qaida Attacks Sunni 'Awakening Council'

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By SAMEER N. YACOUB, The Associated Press

Published: November 23, 2007

BAGHDAD - Al-Qaida militants commandeered Iraqi army vehicles and then attacked U.S.-backed Sunni fighters in south Baghdad during a fierce gunbattle that left 18 people dead Thursday, police and local Sunnis said.

Later Thursday, mortars or rockets slammed into the U.S.-protected Green Zone - dramatizing warnings by senior American commanders that extremists still pose a threat to Iraq's fragile security despite the downturn in violence.

The gunbattle began before dawn when al-Qaida militants killed three Iraqi soldiers and seized two Humvees in the rural area of Hawr Rijab on the southern rim of the capital, according to a police report.

Militants then drove the Humvees to the nearby headquarters of the local "awakening council" - Sunnis who have turned against al-Qaida in Iraq. The assailants opened fire on the headquarters with rifles and machine guns from the Humvees, the report said.

U.S. helicopters joined the fight, blasting a van transporting a machine gun and mortar tube, the American military said. An F-16 jet dropped a 500-pound bomb and destroyed the vehicle as al-Qaida broke off the attack, the United States said, adding that two insurgents were killed.

The dead included eight members of the U.S.-backed group and seven al-Qaida suspects in addition to the three Iraqi soldiers, according to police and local Sunni leaders.

In statements posted Thursday on Islamist Web sites, the al-Qaida front group, the Islamic State of Iraq, claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on U.S.-backed "awakening" groups.

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