U.S. Soldier Killed as Two Iraqi Policemen Fire on Troops in Mosul

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 25, 2009; Page A11

BAGHDAD, Feb. 24 -- Two Iraqi policemen opened fired on four American soldiers and two Iraqi interpreters inside a police station in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, the third deadly attack on U.S. troops in two weeks in the still-volatile provinces of Nineveh and Diyala.

One American soldier and one interpreter were killed, the U.S. military said. The three other soldiers and second interpreter were wounded. An Iraqi police captain at the scene was slightly wounded, police officials said. The assailants escaped.

The assault highlighted the violence that continues in large patches of northern and central Iraq, even as security has improved in Baghdad and other areas. Sunni Muslim insurgents remain entrenched in Nineveh -- especially in the provincial capital, Mosul -- and in Diyala, 40 miles north of Baghdad.

Tuesday's attack came a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki reopened Iraq's National Museum, declaring it a symbol of the nation's stability and progress. Hours later, a roadside bomb killed three American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter during combat operations in Diyala.

Two weeks ago, a suicide car bomber killed four U.S. soldiers and their Iraqi interpreters in Mosul, the deadliest assault against American troops in nine months. Despite massive U.S. and Iraqi military offensives in the past year, Mosul remains a stubborn stronghold of the Sunni insurgency, especially the group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Tuesday's assault occurred in broad daylight. About 2 p.m., the American soldiers were inside the headquarters of a brigade that protects bridges in the western section of the city, said Brig. Gen. Saeed al-Jubouri, a spokesman for the Nineveh provincial police. Two policemen opened fire, killing one of the Iraqi interpreters instantly, he said.

The attack appeared well planned. After firing their weapons, the policemen ran outside the station and up the stairs of a nearby bridge. "They got into a car that was waiting for them and escaped," Jubouri said.

By the time police forces went to the assailants' homes, their families had also fled, police officials said.

"Al-Qaeda has infiltrated the police forces in Mosul," said an Interior Ministry official in Baghdad, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. The ministry oversees the police.

Iraq's police and Interior Ministry have long been infiltrated by Shiite Muslim militias, and less so by Sunni insurgents. For years, Iraqis were reluctant to approach police checkpoints for fear they might become targets. The police were widely thought to have committed some of the most heinous sectarian killings.

That mistrust of the police lingers to this day, even though Maliki and Jawad al-Bolani, Iraq's interior minister, have worked hard to rid the ministry of militia members and insurgents. More than 60,000 employees of the Interior Ministry have been fired in the past year.

The latest effort to stop the infiltration came Monday when the ministry announced the arrest of a Shiite gang, made up of police officers, accused of killing the sister of Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, in April 2006. The slaying was part of a series of kidnappings and killings by the gang, officials said. Twelve gang members were arrested, all former employees of the Interior Ministry, officials said.

On Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal, deputy interior minister for intelligence, publicly condemned the attack on the American soldiers in Mosul and apologized to the U.S. military, declaring that there was "harmony between the two sides."

"This operation is extraordinary and is not representative of the Iraqi police," Kamal said on Iraq's al-Sharqiya television network.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, an influential Sunni politician publicly spoke in support of a Sunni lawmaker accused of orchestrating the 2007 bombing of Iraq's parliament.

Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of a Sunni political party that made a strong showing in Sunni areas in last month's provincial elections, charged that Iraq's Shiite-led government was doing little to investigate abuses committed by Shiites during the height of Iraq's sectarian war.

"We demand that all files against other lawmakers be opened and investigated by a special parliament committee that is free from government pressures," he told a news conference.

Mutlaq's comments came a day after Mohammed al-Daini, the accused lawmaker, asserted that the government was conspiring to silence him because he had criticized Iraq's Shiite political leaders. The government has released videotaped confessions by Daini's bodyguards implicating him as the organizer of a series of attacks, including mortar strikes into the Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government buildings are situated.

Special correspondents Zaid Sabah in Baghdad, Qais Mizher in Damascus, Syria, and Washington Post staff in Mosul contributed to this report.