Kirkuk judge abducted, Mosul security plan launched (Roundup)

Apr 3, 2007, 16:55 GMT

Baghdad - Violence continued Tuesday across conflict-torn Iraq as with a Kirkuk court judge abducted as the new Fard al-Qanoun - Law Enforcement - security plan was launched in northern Iraqi city of Mosul, sources said.

Unidentified gunmen kidnapped Judge Khaled Fadaam in the area of Aazim in northern Baquba, Diyala province, independent Voice of Iraq reported, citing an Iraqi police source.

Aazim, 150 kilometres north of Baghdad, is a dangerous area where armed groups are active and wage attacks on security forces and civilians. The area is located north of Baquba, capital of the mixed Sunni and Shiite province of Diyala, 57 kilometres north of Baghdad.

The Law Enforcement security plan, meanwhile, has kicked off in Mosul as a continuation of the security plan launched on February 14 in Baghdad, Voices of Iraq reported citing the governor of Ninewa province, Duraid Mohammed.

The plan will include the positioning of checkpoints in Mosul raiding gunmen's hideouts and gaining security for the city's hot spots, Mohammed added.

Mosul, the capital city of the predominantly Sunni province of Ninewa, is some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Ninewa police chief Wathiq al-Hamdani said 50 suspected gunmen were detained Tuesday under the Law Enforcement in Mosul.

Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed al-Zibari, spokesman for the Iraqi army, said that Iraqi troops, backed by US forces, arrested 33 suspected militants and found weapon caches during raids in the city of Mosul.

In Kut, 170 kilometres south-east Baghdad, an Iraqi policeman was killed and three others wounded Tuesday when an explosive device targeted their patrol near the US Delta base, Voices of Iraq reported, quoting an Iraqi police source.

Also Tuesday, a US plane, believed to be a cargo plane, crashed in a remote area in Salah Eddin province, 175 kilometres north of Baghdad, Voices of Iraq quoted eyewitnesses as saying.

The source added that the US helicopters laid down fire in the area where the plane crashed in order to prevent anyone from approaching the scene.

In other news, five insurgents were killed Tuesday when a bomb apparently detonated prematurely, police said.

In the incident at Khalis, some 60 kilometres east of Baghdad, the five were driving a vehicle containing the bomb when it exploded, police in the provincial capital Baquba said.

Separately, the US military said it killed six insurgents in an air attack at Fallujah, 70 kilometres west of Baghdad. The insurgents were believed to be members of a network smuggling foreign fighters into Iraq.

But the US military also said that three US soldiers were killed in fighting on Monday in Anbar province in western Iraq, while a fourth soldier was killed in a suicide truck-bomb attack in the northern city of Kirkuk.

In that attack, outside an Iraqi police building, two policemen and 10 civilians were also killed and 200 persons were wounded, many of them schoolchildren.