U.S. military beefs up near Syria
Signals crackdown on Iraqi insurgents near porous border
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military has bulked up its presence in northwestern Iraq near Syria, signaling another clampdown on insurgents who have crossed over the long, porous Iraq-Syria border.
Insurgent violence in that region -- the restive Nineveh province -- continued.
A suicide car bomb went off behind a police station in Hammam al-Ali, south of Mosul, Friday evening, killing two police officers and wounding seven others, the deputy governor said.
Also, mortar rounds wounded five Iraqis in Tal Afar, the U.S. military said.
Tal Afar and Mosul have been the province's major hotspots, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have exchanged months of raids and strikes.
U.S. troops have begun a sweep of northwestern towns for insurgents who may be using the remote area as a staging ground for terror attacks in Baghdad and other cities, said Jane Arraf, who's travelling with the U.S. military in Tal Afar.
The dramatic increase in the number of U.S. troops -- now estimated at 4,000 -- and the arrival of more tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters portends the start of a crackdown on insurgents, including foreign fighters who are believed to have crossed into Iraq from Syria.
The efforts follow a spike in insurgent attacks, in which hundreds have been killed, after the new transitional government was announced in late April.
Operations against the insurgency in Baghdad and around nearby Abu Ghraib during the last 10 days have resulted in 800 arrests, a senior U.S. military official said. Most of those are Iraqis, but a few were foreign fighters, he said.
The U.S. military said that a Bradley Fighting Vehicle manned by coalition forces collided with a car carrying Iraq civilians north of Baghdad Friday. In what's being reported as a traffic accident, two Iraqis were killed, including a child, when their vehicle caught fire, the military said.
In another incident Friday, at least four civilians were wounded and several shops damaged during a noontime blast in western Baghdad, Iraqi police said. A U.S. military convoy appeared to be the target, but avoided the explosion.
The attacks came a day after insurgents launched attacks across Iraq, killing some 30 people and wounding scores of others.
Sunnis in political talks
Sunni Arabs began talks Thursday with members of the panel writing Iraq's new constitution, officials said.
The talks are part of an effort by the 275-member transitional National Assembly, dominated by Shiites and Kurds, to bring Sunnis into the new political process.
Sunnis largely shunned participation in the January 30 elections for the National Assembly. They dominated under Saddam's regime, even though the majority of Iraqis -- an estimated 60 percent -- are Shiite Arabs.
"We welcome this participation," Shiite Arab cleric Hummam Hammoudi said earlier this week. "[We] are accepting, willing and eager for this participation."
Hammoudi heads the assembly's 55-member constitutional committee that has until August 15 to draft a document to be put before voters in October.
Sunni leaders met three hours Thursday with a seven-member subcommittee of the panel assigned the job of trying to bring their perspective into the drafting process, a Sunni official said. Another meeting is scheduled next week, the official said.
Among the subjects discussed was organizing conferences throughout the country on the constitution, said Ayad al-Samarraie, a spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party, a major Sunni political group.
Another topic was making the constitution-writing committee more reflective of the population, al-Samarraie said.
Hammoudi said the government is intent on meeting the August deadline.
"Any delay will give the impression that the process is not successful and erroneous," he said.
Other developments
U.S. officials reported that three American soldiers died Wednesday, including two in combat near the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The military also said two U.S. soldiers were killed in combat Tuesday -- one in Baghdad and the other in Qaim near the Syrian border. The number of American troops who have died in the Iraq war stands at 1,669.A top insurgent figure, called Emir Abu Ghraib, was captured Thursday during a crackdown in Baghdad, an Iraqi Defense Ministry official said. Ghraib, which is not his real name, is suspected in the killings of 100 Iraqi civilians, 40 Iraqi security forces and the attack on the Abu Ghraib prison complex in April, the official said. The crackdown, known as Operation Lightning, includes widespread cordons, roadblocks and house-to-house searches.CNN's Jane Arraf, Jennifer Eccleston, Ryan Chilcote, Enes Dulami, Kianne Sadeq and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.
