10,000 U.S. troops begin raids

BAGHDAD -- About 10,000 U.S. soldiers launched an offensive against al-Qaida in Iraq northeast of Baghdad early today, killing at least 22 insurgents, the U.S. military said.

The raids, dubbed "Operation Arrowhead Ripper," took place in Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province, and involved air assaults under the cover of darkness, the military said in a statement. The operation was still in its opening stages, it said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces also struck Baghdad's southern flanks.

The attacks are intended to clear out Sunni insurgents, al-Qaida fighters and Shiite militiamen who had fled the capital and Anbar during a four-month-old security operation, military officials said Monday.

A top U.S. military official said American forces were taking advantage of the arrival of the final brigade of 30,000 additional U.S. troops to open the concerted attacks.

"We are going into the areas that have been sanctuaries of al-Qaida and other extremists to take them on and weed them out," the senior official said. "Those are areas in the belts around Baghdad, some parts in Anbar province and specifically Diyala province."

Al-Qaida has proved to be an agile foe for U.S. and Iraqi forces, as shown by its ability to shift major operations to Baqouba from Anbar province, the sprawling desert region in western Iraq.

Fort Lewis team

The New York Times reported the Baqouba operation is being led by the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis.

Well to the south, Iraqi officials reported fierce overnight fighting that began as British and Iraqi forces conducted house-to-house searches in Amarah, a stronghold of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia.

The U.S. military said at least 20 people were killed in clashes with coalition forces.

A doctor at Amarah's general hospital said 36 bodies had been taken to his facility, though he could not determine how many were militiamen and how many were civilians.

The fighting in Amarah, the U.S. military said, was a targeted operation against what the coalition said were members of a "secret cell" that imported deadly armor-piercing weapons made in Iran known as "explosively formed penetrators," or EFPs. The cells were also suspected of sending militants to Iran for terror training.

Iraqi police said the Mahdi Army, the militia commanded by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was involved in the clashes, which lasted about two hours before dawn.

Amarah is the provincial capital of Maysan province, a predominantly Shiite region that borders Iran. Iraqi forces took over control of security from British troops there in April. The city has seen intense militia fighting.

The operations on Baghdad's flanks were opened by the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, which has taken over al-Qaida-infested regions to the south. The division began its drive into the Salman Pak and Arab Jabour districts on the city's southeastern fringe over the weekend.

At the time, ground-forces commander Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said U.S. troops were headed for those areas in force for the first time in three years.

Pressure on al-Qaida

Military officials said Multi-National Division-North forces likewise were increasing pressure on al-Qaida sanctuaries northeast of the capital in Diyala, now one of the most fiercely contested regions in Iraq.

The province is a tangle of Shiite and Sunni villages that has played into the hands of al-Qaida and allied militants who have sought to inflame existing sectarian troubles.

Al-Qaida has conducted public executions in the Baqouba main square and otherwise sought to enforce an extreme Taliban-style Islamic code.

Its actions in the province have caused some Sunni militants to turn their guns on the group with U.S. assistance. Some militant Shiites are likewise joining government forces in a bid to oust foreign fighters and Muslim extremists.

Multi-National Division-Baghdad, which has run the security operation in the capital since it began Feb. 14, has increased pressure on districts to the northwest to cut supply and reinforcement lines from Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, to the Baqouba region.

Some Sunni tribes, which had fought alongside or offered sanctuary to al-Qaida in Anbar province, also have risen up against the group and are receiving arms and training from U.S. forces. American military officials are trying to spread that success to al-Qaida areas now under attack.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, told visiting Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last week that the U.S. should stop arming Sunnis who may have been part of the insurgency, according to officials in his office. Al-Maliki repeated that position in a television interview Monday.

Violence also erupted again in Samarra, north of Baghdad, the site of a bombing Wednesday that targeted a revered Shiite shrine and prompted officials to clamp curfews on Baghdad and Samarra. Police said four people died when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a Samarra school used to house police officers.

A 24-hour curfew in Samarra was relaxed Saturday. The car bomber struck Monday.

Four suspects were arrested in connection with the mosque bombing.

The death toll in sectarian violence Monday skyrocketed after a brief period of relative peace. At least 111 people were killed or found dead nationwide, with 33 bodies of torture victims recovered in Baghdad.

Elsewhere in Iraq, CBS News reported that U.S. soldiers last week discovered two dozen emaciated boys at a government-run orphanage for special-needs children in Baghdad -- some tied to cribs and covered in feces. The soldiers said they found shelves filled with food and new clothes still in their plastic wrapping in the facility.

Children relocated

Two security guards were arrested on al-Maliki's orders, but the caretaker of the orphanage and two female employees have disappeared, CBS reported. The children were all moved to another orphanage in the city, the report said.

Four years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq has become the world's second-most unstable country behind Sudan, according to a private think tank in Washington. The 2007 Failed States Index, which is produced by the Fund for Peace, a research group, and Foreign Policy Magazine, last year put Iraq in fourth place.

A U.S. official acknowledged Monday that two of the benchmarks originally sought by the White House to prove Iraqi political progress were virtually unachievable in the near term, but that laws to share oil wealth and hold provincial elections were realistic goals.