Samarra

SAN FRANCISCO -- A California National Guardsman says three fellow soldiers brazenly abused detainees during interrogation sessions in an Iraqi police station, threatening them with guns, sticking lighted cigarettes in their ears, and choking them until they collapsed. Sergeant Greg Ford said he repeatedly had to revive prisoners who had passed out and once saw a soldier stand on the back of a handcuffed detainee's neck and pull his arms until they popped out of their sockets. "I had to intervene, because they couldn't keep their hands off of them," said Ford, part of a four-member team from...

BAGHDAD - An Iraqi military helicopter has crashed in northern Iraq, killing an American soldier and seven other people, the US military said yesterday. The announcement came on a day that recorded little violence in Iraq. The country's president announced he would visit neighboring Turkey, and the prime minister called for the release of a kidnapped Chaldean Catholic archbishop. The Russian-made M-17 helicopter was found yesterday south of Beiji, about 90 miles south of Mosul, a day after it was reported missing.

TIKRIT, Iraq -- One way or another, the US Army and its Iraqi allies will seize the insurgent-held city of Samarra before January's general election, the US Army commander responsible for the city said yesterday. Major General John Batiste, who leads the Army's First Infantry Division, said he is confident a combination of diplomacy, US aid, and Army intimidation will persuade the city's insurgents, estimated to number about 500, to give up. If not, Batiste said, the Germany-based First Infantry will assault ancient Samarra, a former Islamic capital whose warren-like center lies in the...

One of the few positive developments to come out of the war in Iraq has been the rise of an engaged and furiously creative school of documentary and meta-documentary filmmaking. "No End in Sight," "The War Tapes," "The Road to Guantanamo," "The Ground Truth" - it's difficult to single any of these out as the best. With the arrival of Brian De Palma's "Redacted," though, we can safely say we've found the worst. A crude, unbearably smug attempt to provoke outrage from a filmmaker desperate to be relevant again, the film "visually documents imagined events before, during, and after a 2006...

BAGHDAD -- Guerrillas carried out a series of raids in Samarra yesterday, stealing weapons from a police station, which they blew up, and exchanged fire with police and US troops. At least five Iraqis were killed, and the city police chief resigned. Underscoring security concerns, the Interior Ministry backed a reported proposal by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to spread elections planned for Jan. 30 over as long as three weeks in hopes of allowing people to vote safely. The decision ultimately belongs to Iraq's electoral commission; a top official there said Allawi had not mentioned the...

US and Iraqi forces launched a major attackagainst the insurgent strongholdof Samarra early today, securinggovernment and police buildingsin the city, the US command said. The offensive came in responseto "repeated and unprovoked attacksby anti-Iraqi forces" againstIraqi and coalition forces, the militarysaid in a statement. Its aimwas to kill or capture insurgents inthe city, 60 miles north of Baghdad. "Unimpeded access throughoutthe city for Iraqi SecurityForces and Multi-National Forcesis nonnegotiable," said the statement,which was issued early yesterdayin Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - A bomb in a parked car struck worshipers heading to a Shi'ite mosque yesterday in Baghdad, killing at least nine people as Iraqis celebrated a Muslim holiday. North of the capital, the death toll rose to 18 in a coordinated suicide truck bombing and ambush. Relatives and rescue workers pulled bodies from under piles of concrete bricks and rubble in the Sunni city of Samarra, where a suicide truck bomber detonated his explosives late Saturday. Guards had opened fire before he could reach the targeted police headquarters.

SAMARRA, Iraq -- "We want the correspondent!" two gunmen shouted as they pulled up in a pickup truck. They fired into the air, and then killed an Al-Arabiya newswoman and two colleagues. Al-Arabiya's Atwar Bahjat, whose face is widely recognizable in Iraq and throughout the Arab world, was interviewing Iraqis outside Samarra after the bombing Wednesday of a revered Shi'ite shrine. The station lost contact that night with Bajhat and her two colleagues from the local Wassan media company, Adnan Khairullah, an engineer, and Khalid Mahmoud, a cameraman.

BAGHDAD -- American warplanes struck militant positions in two insurgent-controlled cities yesterday and US and Iraqi troops quietly took control of a third in a sweeping crackdown following a spike in attacks against US forces. More than 60 people were reported killed, most of them in Tal Afar, one of several cities that American officials acknowledged this week had fallen under insurgent control and become "no-go" zones. Nine people, including two children, were reported killed in an airstrike in Fallujah against a house that the US command suspected of...

BAGHDAD -- US and Iraqi forces took control of the central Iraqi city of Samarra yesterday but engaged in sporadic clashes with insurgents who had dispersed into the narrowest of its closely packed streets to continue fighting in small bands. Iraqi officials used the apparent victory as an opportunity to warn resistance fighters who control or frequently destabilize other cities in central and northern Iraq and harass US and Iraqi patrols on the roads between them. "This is the first step in operations to take back lawless areas," Interior Minister Falah Naqib, a native...

BAGHDAD - Former Sunni insurgents asked the United States to stay away, and then ambushed members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, killing 18 in a battle that raged for hours north of Baghdad, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said yesterday. The Islamic Army in Iraq sent advance word to Iraqi police requesting that US helicopters keep out of the area because its fighters had no uniforms and were indistinguishable from Al Qaeda, according to the police and a top Islamic Army leader known as Abu Ibrahim.

BAGHDAD - A bomb in a parked car struck worshipers heading to a Shi'ite mosque yesterday in Baghdad, killing at least nine people as Iraqis celebrated a Muslim holiday. North of the capital, the death toll rose to 18 in a coordinated suicide truck bombing and ambush. Relatives and rescue workers pulled bodies from under piles of concrete bricks and rubble in the Sunni city of Samarra, where a suicide truck bomber detonated his explosives late Saturday. Guards had opened fire before he could reach the targeted police headquarters.

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber drove his truck into a police station north of Baghdad yesterday, crumbling the squat concrete building and damaging a school in the deadliest of a series of blasts that killed at least 24 people across Iraq. Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks in the capital and two northern areas. But they bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which has promised an offensive to coincide with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The blast in Dijlah, a village in the Sunni heartland 60 miles north of the capital, tore through...

NEWPORT, N.H. -- Snow, sleet, and slick roads didn't deter the hundreds of mourners who turned out yesterday for the funeral of a New Hampshire soldier killed in Iraq. About 400 people crowded into the South Congregational Church to honor Army Specialist Justin Rollins, 22, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Samarra on March 5. Governor John Lynch and US Senator Judd Gregg joined Rollins's family, friends, and colleagues, recalling Rollins as a free-spirited, rambunctious youth who found his calling as a paratrooper.

BAGHDAD -- Thunderous car bombs shattered a crowded marketplace in the heart of Baghdad yesterday, triggering secondary explosions, engulfing an eight-story building in flames, and killing at least 78 people in the latest in a series of similar attacks aimed at the country's Shi'ite majority. The blasts in three parked cars obliterated shops and stalls and left bodies scattered among mannequins and other debris in pools of blood. Dense smoke blackened the area and rose hundreds of feet from the market district on the east bank of the Tigris River.

BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi whose brother was killed by American troops during a raid north of Baghdad condemned yesterday a US military investigation that cleared forces of wrongdoing, as new footage showed that at least four children were among the victims. The US military said yesterday it found no wrongdoing by American troops accused of intentionally killing civilians during a March 15 raid in Ishaqi, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. As many as 13 Iraqis were killed. The investigation concluded that US troops followed normal procedures in raising...

BAGHDAD -- Thunderous car bombs shattered a crowded marketplace in the heart of Baghdad yesterday, triggering secondary explosions, engulfing an eight-story building in flames, and killing at least 78 people in the latest in a series of similar attacks aimed at the country's Shi'ite majority. The blasts in three parked cars obliterated shops and stalls and left bodies scattered among mannequins and other debris in pools of blood. Dense smoke blackened the area and rose hundreds of feet from the market district on the east bank of the Tigris River.

BAGHDAD -- Iraqi insurgents detonated a car bomb and then hammered a military headquarters in the city of Samarra with a mortar barrage yesterday, leveling the building and killing five US soldiers and an Iraqi guardsman, the US military said. American troops, backed by attack helicopters, then fanned out through the city to hunt down the attackers in clashes that lasted into the late afternoon. Tanks deployed in the streets; smoke rose above a mosque. The violence also killed three civilians, medical officials said.

BAGHDAD -- The pilgrims' road to the holy city of Karbala was a highway of bullets and bombs for Shi'ite Muslims yesterday. Drive-by shootings and roadside and bus bombs killed or wounded 19 people, intensifying the sectarian tensions gripping Iraq. Security forces, including US armored reinforcements, braced for more bloodshed leading up to Monday's Shi'ite holiday. And north of Baghdad, in the Sunni Triangle, a two-day-old operation involving 1,500 US and Iraqi troops swept through an area near Samarra in search of insurgents.

BAGHDAD -- President Jalal Talabani underscored the need for a unity government in Iraq yesterday after a spasm of sectarian killing and said he had been assured that US forces will remain in the country as long as needed, "no matter what the period. " He spoke after a bomb exploded at a minibus terminal during morning rush hour in a southeastern Baghdad suburb, killing seven people and wounding 25, one of a string of explosions in the capital and elsewhere. The violence shattered the relative calm brought by Friday's driving ban in Baghdad and its outskirts,...