Jail raid illustrates threat of militants

BAQUBAH, Iraq -- Until dawn broke, officials did not think of Muqdadiyah as an especially vulnerable place. Police occasionally raided nearby villages, as they did last weekend, hauling rebel suspects to cells in a courthouse compound in the city center.

At 5:45 a.m. yesterday, masked men came to break them out. Descending from a dozen cars and pickup trucks laden with mortars and grenades, they surrounded the compound and blasted away, killing at least 17 police officers and guards and freeing 33 prisoners in one of Iraq's boldest insurgent raids in months.

The highly coordinated frontal attack, which featured car bombs to repel reinforcements, was a potent reminder of the Sunni-led insurgency's capacity to strike at Iraqi government and US targets, despite almost constant sweeps against their forces and President Bush's frequent assertions of progress in combating the insurgency.

In 90 minutes of fighting, the rebels destroyed 12 police cars and set fire to the courthouse and adjacent police station, holding off outnumbered US and Iraqi forces. Reinforcements, delayed by insurgent booby traps, eventually chased down some of the insurgents, capturing eight as they fled in two vehicles.

Six of the attackers were killed, the US military said, and 18 policemen and two American soldiers were wounded.

The raid occurred as US and Iraqi forces had concentrated in recent days on guarding against sectarian attacks against the 2 million Shi'ite pilgrims who gathered in the southern holy city of Karbala this week to mark the 40th and final day of the annual mourning period for Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.

Instead, the insurgents aimed their deadliest strike about 60 miles north of Baghdad, in Muqdadiyah, an ethnically mixed city of 200,000 with a Sunni majority. Rebel forces also killed a policeman in Baqubah with a bomb, and fatally shot an American soldier on patrol in western Baghdad.

In an Internet posting, the military wing of the Mujaheddin Shura Council, a Sunni insurgent group, claimed responsibility for the attack in Muqdadiyah.

Witnesses described a withering firefight and bold defense by the police and guards, who reportedly ran out of ammunition and were overrun on the roof of the jail.

About 100 armed insurgents in a dozen cars and pickup trucks surrounded the municipal compound at 5:45 a.m. and began their assault.

Although frontal raids on police facilities in Sunni regions have not been unusual, yesterday's operation was the largest reported in Iraq this year.

Sean Brown, a US Army captain, said he saw 20 to 35 insurgents when he arrived later with the First Squadron of the 32d Cavalry. ''They definitely had a coordinated effort to block the headquarters" before attacking it, Brown said after returning to base in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, which encompasses Muqdadiyah.

Police said at least 18 of the escaped prisoners were rebel suspects rounded up Sunday. The rest were charged with common crimes.

Raad Rasheed Mulla Jawad, the provincial governor, told reporters he suspected that the attackers had help from collaborators on the police force.

''Today's attack is just one more warning that we face at least another year of serious fighting in the effort to defeat the insurgency," said Anthony H. Cordesman, an Iraq specialist at the private Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. ''We have not yet seen either a serious rise in insurgent capability or a serious decrease. Instead, we see cycles of violence, new patterns of attack."

Worried that the violence is fueled by a vacuum of authority, six US senators prodded interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in Baghdad yesterday to speed up efforts to form a government.

Jaafari, a Shi'ite whose bid to keep his job has stalled negotiations among party leaders, told reporters afterward that he hoped the effort to put together a ruling coalition ''does not last beyond April."

''April is fine," Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said later at a news conference. ''But we need that commitment kept, in order for there to be continuing support for American troops to be kept in Iraq."