Bomb Wounds Two; Eight Suspected
Insurgents Detained

AFPS

Two Task Force Baghdad soldiers were wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated in northern Baghdad, Iraq, Monday.

The soldiers were taken to a military medical facility. No report was available on their condition.

Earlier, 1st Infantry Division soldiers captured five people in a raid near Duluiyah. One detainee was turned over to Iraqi police, and four were taken to Multinational Force Iraq detention facilities for questioning. A rocket-propelled grenade, four AK-47 assault rifles, four AK-47 magazines, a Russian night-vision device, and a bayonet were confiscated in the raid.

On Jan. 2, multinational forces detained one suspected insurgent following a rocket attack on a multinational base near Balad. The individual was detained during a search of a house near the point where the rocket fire originated. The detainee was taken to a Multinational Force detention facility for explosives- residue testing.

Also on Jan. 2, in northern Iraq, multinational forces from 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), detained two people suspected of anti-Iraqi activities.

Soldiers, from 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, conducted a cordon-and- search operation in western Mosul and detained two members of an insurgent cell there. The suspects are in custody undergoing questioning. No injuries to multinational forces were reported during the operation.

Elsewhere in Iraq, Iraqi police officers thwarted another attack on Iraqi security forces near Tal Afar. Officers manning a police outpost near an Iraqi army compound west of Mosul exchanged small-arms fire with insurgents on Jan. 2. Police wounded two of the suspects, causing the remaining attackers to retreat.

Since Nov. 10, Iraqi police have thwarted more than a dozen insurgent attacks.

On New Year’s Day, members of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment from the 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team uncovered a significant weapons cache in Salman Pak, a small town roughly 12 miles south of Baghdad.

Working from a local resident’s tip, the troops went to a house and searched the back yard. The search turned up numerous rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, RPG launchers, hand grenades, plastic explosives, fuses, body armor, and nuclear, biological and chemical protective masks.

The owners of the home were not present when the cache was found. The soldiers confiscated all the materials and destroyed them at a separate location.