U.S.-Iraqi raid in nets militia suspect

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BAGHDAD, Iraq: Tuesday; 21 November 2006: U.S. and Iraqi forces raided Baghdad's Sadr City on Tuesday and detained seven militia members, including one believed to have information about an American soldier kidnapped last month, the military said. A popular comedian who had poked fun at Iraq's security was buried, a day after he was shot to death driving through Baghdad.

Iraq restored diplomatic relations with Syria as part of a wider regional effort to clamp off violence in Iraq. Iran has invited the Iraqi and Syrian presidents to a weekend summit in Tehran — an invitation thought to be an attempt by Tehran to upstage expected U.S. moves to enlist Syria and Iran in tackling the chaos in Iraq.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he would attend but that Syrian President Bashar Assad would not.

Police Capt. Mohammed Ismail said a young boy and two other people were killed in the early morning raid and 15 people were wounded. Several houses were damaged.

Holding the child's body in his arms, a Shiite legislator told reporters outside a hospital morgue that Iraq's government should be condemned for allowing such attacks.

"I am suspending my membership in parliament since it remains silent about crimes such as this against the Iraqi people," legislator Saleh Al-Ukailli told reporters outside the Imam Ali Hospital. "I will not return to parliament until the occupation troops leave the country."

Al-Ukailli is one of 30 legislators in Iraq's 275-member parliament who follow Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric whose main offices are in Sadr City.

The U.S. command said Iraqi forces were attacked with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades during the raid, and that U.S. aircraft returned fire from the ground. It said no coalition casualties were reported, and "civilian and enemy casualties could not be determined."

Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, a 41-year-old reserve soldier from Ann Arbor, Mich., was visiting his Iraqi wife in Baghdad on Oct. 23 when gunmen handcuffed him and took him away.

The U.S. command said the raid "detained an illegal armed group kidnapping and murder cell leader ... reported to have firsthand knowledge of the control and movement" of al-Taayie.

Six other suspected cell members also were detained, the military said.

By midday Tuesday, three Iraqis were killed and 24 wounded in other attacks involving crossfire between police and gunmen, roadside bombs, drive-by shootings and car bombs in the cities of Baghdad and Mosul.

Elsewhere in Baghdad on Tuesday, a taxi left Yarmouk Hospital's morgue in western Baghdad with a wooden casket carrying Iraq's famous Shiite comedian Walid Hassan to a funeral in Najaf, the holy Shiite city south of Baghdad.

Grieving relatives and colleagues gathered near the casket as it was tied to the roof of the taxi, including several crying women wearing head-to-toe black gowns.

Haasan, 47, a star of "Caricature," a popular Iraqi show on Al-Sharqiyah TV known for its dark humor about the country's many problems, was shot to death while driving through Baghdad on Monday. He was the father of five children.

His weekend television show poked fun at Iraq's poor security, long gas lines, electricity blackouts and ineffective politicians — desperately needed comic relief to many Iraqi fans.

The agreement to resume relations with Syria came during a visit by that country's foreign minister, the first senior Syrian official to travel to Iraq since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein. Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the ambassadors would be named soon.

Syria broke diplomatic ties with Iraq in 1982, accusing it of inciting riots in Syria by the banned Muslim Brotherhood. Damascus also sided with Iran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Trade ties were resumed in 1997.

More recently, Syria is widely believed to have done little to stop foreign fighters and al-Qaida recruits from crossing its border to join Sunni insurgents in Iraq. It also has provided refuge for many top members of Saddam's former leadership and political corps, which is thought to have organized arms and funding for the insurgents. The Sunni insurgency, since it sprang to life in the late summer of 2003, has been responsible for the vast majority of U.S. deaths in Iraq.

Tuesday's raid was the third in four days by U.S. and Iraqi forces in the Sadr City, the headquarters of al-Sadr's Madhi Army, the heavily armed Shiite militia suspected of having carried out the mass kidnapping at a Ministry of Higher Education office in Baghdad on Nov. 14.

Dozens of suspected Shiite militia gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped scores of people during the raid at the ministry, which is predominantly Sunni Arab.

That attack was as another example of widespread revenge killings and kidnappings that are taking place between Iraq's majority Shiites and minority Sunnis, leaving Iraq on the brink of a sectarian civil war.

A rogue cell from the Mahdi Army militia also is suspected of having captured al-Taayie.