Iraqi forces arrest group of armed Syrians north of Mosul

Jul 21, 2009, 8:44 GMT

Mosul, Iraq - Iraqi soldiers arrested a group of armed Syrian men north of Mosul, Iraqi police told the German Press Agency dpa on Tuesday.

Police in Mosul, some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, said the Iraqi army's 3rd Brigade had arrested four men carrying weapons and Syrian passports near the village of al-Sada Baawiza.

The arrests came as Syria hosted firebrand Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Damascus for the first time since February 2006.

According to an official statement from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's office, al-Assad and al-Sadr were nearly unanimous in their support for unity among the Iraqi people and the national reconciliation process.

During al-Sadr's last visit to Damascus, which came amid rising tensions between former US president George W Bush's administration and the Syrian government, al-Sadr vowed to stand by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if Syria were attacked.

Top US government officials have repeatedly asked Syria to provide closer military and intelligence cooperation on Iraq.

The arrests also came amid continued, near-daily deadly attacks in the area.

On Monday, police told dpa that 'unknown gunmen' shot a young girl near her home in the eastern Mosul district of Palestine.

They would not elaborate except to say that the attackers then ran away, and that they were investigating the incident.

In a separate incident on Monday, in the Mosul district of al- Thaqafiya, one policeman was killed and a second wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol.

In two other attacks in the city, gunmen shot and killed a traffic police officer on duty in a northern district of Mosul, and fatally shot a second as he was on his way to work in the New Mosul district.

The attacks followed a pre-dawn raid on suspected militants that resulted in the arrest of six people suspected of taking part in attacks on police and civilians in al-Quds neighborhood of eastern Mosul, police said.

Mosul and its environs, one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse areas in Iraq, remain the site of nearly daily, deadly attacks despite successive security sweeps that police say have netted hundreds of insurgents this year.