Fighting eased on the second day of a sweep through Tal Afar -- a militant stronghold near the Syrian border -- as insurgents melted into the countryside, many escaping through a tunnel network they dug under the ancient city in the north of Iraq. Iraqi and US military officials vowed to expand the offensive.
The 8,500-strong Iraqi-US force continued house-to-house searches on Sunday, and military leaders said the assault would push all along the Syrian frontier and in the Euphrates River valley.
Cities and towns along the fabled river are bastions of the insurgency, a collection of foreign fighters and disaffected Sunni Muslims, many of them loyal to former president Saddam Hussein.
About 5,000 Iraqi soldiers, backed by a 3,500-strong US armored force, reported 156 insurgents killed and 246 captured. The force discovered a big bomb factory, 18 weapons caches and the tunnel network in the ancient Sarai neighborhood of Tal Afar, 100km east of the Syrian border.
"The terrorists had seen it coming [and prepared] tunnel complexes to be used as escape routes," Major General Rick Lynch said.
Lynch said operations in Tal Afar were part of a much larger, countrywide plan to destroy insurgent and al-Qaeda bases, which included ongoing operations in Mosul, Qaim and the western town of Rutba.
But in a separate statement, a group claiming to be an offshoot of al-Qaeda said it would retaliate against the government and security forces in the capital.
"The Taifa al-Mansoura Army has decided to ... strike at strategic and other targets of importance for the occupation and the infidels in Baghdad by using chemical and unconventional weapons developed by the mujahedeen, unless the military operations in Tal Afar stop within 24 hours," the statement said.
It was not immediately possible to determine the authenticity of the statement, which was posted on a Web site known for its militant contents.
Iraqi Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi said the sweep of Tal Afar was carried out at the request of city residents and would be a model as his forces attacked other insurgent-held cities in quick succession.
"After the Tal Afar operation ends, we will move on Rabiyah [on the Syrian border] and Sinjar [a region north of nearby Mosul] and then go down to the Euphrates valley," al-Dulaimi said.
"We are warning those who have given shelter to terrorists that they must stop, kick them out or else we will cut off their hands, heads and tongues as we did in Tal Afar," he said, apparently using figurative language.
In Baghdad, the Interior Ministry director of police training was gunned down in front of his home in a western neighborhood as he waited for a ride to work. Major General Adnan Abdul Rihman died on the spot, said local police commander Major Musa Abdul Karim.
The US military said a Task Force Liberty Soldier was killed in a roadside bombing before dawn on Sunday while on patrol near Samarra, 95km north of the capital. Two soldiers were wounded.
In Basra, one British soldier was killed and three were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy, the Ministry of Defense said in London, confirming an Iraqi police report.
In the Tal Afar sweep, Al-Dulaimi said five government soldiers were killed and three wound in what was the biggest military operation in Iraq for months. Al-Dulaimi kept up the drumbeat of complaints against Syria for allegedly facilitating insurgent entry into Iraq.
"The Syrians have to stop sending destruction to Iraq. The terrorists have no other gateway into Iraq but Syria," he said.
Saturday's closure of the nearby border crossing with Syria did not affect the frontier crossing near the insurgent stronghold of Qaim which sits on the major highway into Syria and is well to the south of Rabiyah.
Faysal Ibrahim, the head of Syria's Customs Department at the nearby Yaaroubiya border crossing, said US helicopters were seen on Sunday morning about 500m from the Syrian border. Some 500 cargo trucks were lined up at the crossing after the closure.
The offensive in Tal Afar is especially delicate because of the tangle of ethnic sensitivities in the region. About 90 percent of the city's population -- most of which fled to the countryside before the fighting began -- is Sunni Turkmen who have complained about their treatment from the Shiite-dominated government and police force put in place after the US invasion in 2003.
Addressing the complaint, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr announced that 1,000 additional police officers would be hired in Tal Afar after the offensive and that they'd be chosen from the Turkmen population.
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