Al-Qaeda suspects gunned down in Iraqi custody

Mar 14, 2009, 12:25 GMT

Ramadi, Iraq - Six detainees suspected of belonging to the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq were fatally shot while being transferred from custody in the northern province of Nineveh to the western province of al-Anbar, police said.

'Unidentified gunmen killed six detained al-Qaeda members between the villages of Baiji and Haditha in the northwest of Iraq,' a source in al-Anbar's security forces, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Saturday.

He said the men had been captured near Mosul by US soldiers, who transferred them to Iraqi custody. Iraqi security forces were bringing the men to Boka Prison in southern Iraq when gunmen attacked their convoy as it passed through the men's native al-Anbar province.

Iraqi police have arrested more than 100 suspected insurgents since they launched 'Operation New Hope,' an attempt to pacify the area around the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which remains one of the country's most dangerous areas.

Insurgents have responded with a rash of retaliatory bombings and shooting attacks that have mostly targeted Iraqi police and army patrols.

On Saturday, unknown gunmen shot a police officer in central Mosul's central Saray market before disappearing into the crowd, police there said.

In an apparently unrelated attack on Saturday, Ahmed Murad Shehab, a professor in Mosul University's Faculty of Administration and Economics was fatally shot in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of al-Nur, on Mosul's left bank, police said.