15 militants nabbed in heart of Baghdad

Iraqi and U.S. troops chased militants in and out of alleys and conducted house-to-house searches Wednesday in a central Baghdad neighborhood, a day after fierce fighting that killed 50 insurgents.

An Iraqi army officer said 15 suspects had been arrested in Baghdad's troubled Haifa Street section. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

U.S. and Iraqi forces spent the day Wednesday in a mopping up operation, trying to ensure that insurgent forces were cleared from the dangerous neighborhood. The Haifa Street region has come under attack by Americans several times in the war, only to see the return of militant gunmen when the military pressure eased.

The latest operations came hours before President Bush's expected announcement that he would send 20,000 more soldiers to Iraq despite growing opposition on Capitol Hill.

A prominent hard-line leader of Iraq's Sunni Arabs also lashed out against the new security plans by Bush and Iraq's prime minister, saying in an interview published Wednesday that they were plotting to kill Sunnis.

Meanwhile, bombings and shootings across Iraq killed at least 19 people late Tuesday and early Wednesday, including a U.S. soldier who died from a gunshot wound in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.

A suicide bomber walked into a crowd of people milling outside a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, killing four civilians and wounding a dozen others, police said. Around the same time, another bomber targeted the convoy of the Tal Afar mayor. A child was killed and four other people including a driver were hurt, but the mayor survived, police said.

Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obaidi said a new security plan announced by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki days earlier had three or four phases, and that "the first stage has already begun."

Al-Obaidi did not elaborate on what steps the government had taken or say whether the Haifa Street operation was part of the security plan. He said that offensive was launched in response to the killings of 27 people there on Saturday.

"This is what made us decide to go into Haifa street," al-Obaidi told The Associated Press. He added that at least seven foreign Arabs were captured, including some who entered Iraq recently.

An Iraqi army general, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the plan, said the Haifa Street battle was not part of the new Baghdad security plan.

U.S. tanks lined the streets in the neighborhood, a militant Sunni Arab stronghold located just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone _ home to the U.S. Embassy and other facilities.

A security official at the Medical City hospital complex, where some of those wounded Tuesday on Haifa Street were taken, according to police, who were interrogating 20 injured suspects inside the facility. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

Al-Maliki aides have said the assault would target Sunni insurgents first, rather than Shiite Muslim militiamen blamed in sectarian killings.

In an interview published Wednesday, Sunni leader Harith al-Dhari _ head of the influential Association of Muslims Scholars, a group with ties to some Sunni insurgents _ said the offensive would not provide balanced security.

"This government has taken as its job to slaughter, arrest, abduct and displace (Sunnis). It is not taking its responsibility for a real security or economy or even providing services for the Iraqi people," al-Dhari was quoted by the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan as saying.

"Now they want to implement the new security plan with the collaboration of the American president George Bush," he added.

U.S. officials have said the additional U.S. troops deployed under Bush's new strategy would work with Iraqi troops to put down both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen.

But al-Dhari, who left Iraq for Jordan after al-Maliki's government accused him of inciting terrorism, said the security plans were intended to target the Sunni minority.

"This security plan intends to attack and besiege (Sunni) villages and cities, to arrest and eliminate the youths who are thought to be with the resistance, or potential insurgents," he said.

On Tuesday, U.S. jets flew low over Baghdad, and helicopter gunships swooped in to pound the neighborhood. The U.S. military said about 1,000 Iraqi and U.S. soldiers carried out "targeted raids to capture multiple targets, disrupt insurgent activity and restore Iraqi Security Forces' control of North Haifa Street."

"This area has been subject to insurgent activity which has repeatedly disrupted Iraqi Security Force operations in central Baghdad," said a statement quoting Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, spokesman for Multi-National Division Baghdad.

He said no American or Iraqi soldiers were killed in the operation. He did not address the number of militants killed, while the Defense Ministry reported 50 deaths among insurgents.

Meanwhile, President Jalal Talabani said the government should delay the execution of two of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants. Iraqi officials have said the two men were expected to be hanged in the coming days, but no date has been released.

Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, were sentenced to death after being found guilty along with Saddam of involvement in killing 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt on the former leader in the northern town of Dujail.

Saddam was executed Dec. 30 in an unruly scene that brought worldwide criticism of the Iraqi government. Video of the execution, recorded on a cell phone camera, showed the former dictator being taunted on the gallows. The executions of the other two men were postponed until after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which ended a week ago.

"In my opinion we should wait on the executions," Talabani said Wednesday at a news conference with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. "We should examine the situation," he said without elaborating.

In violence elsewhere, four members of a family died when their house in Baghdad's Sadr City section was destroyed Tuesday night. Police initially said the attack was from two mortar shells, but later a police official and witnesses said the home was fired on by U.S. aircraft. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

The U.S. military had no immediate comment.

Sadr City is the largest Baghdad enclave of Iraq's Shiite majority, and a base for the Mahdi Army, a militia led by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. U.S. troops have been conducting raids on homes there in recent weeks.

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Associated Press Writer Omar Sinan contributed to this report from Cairo, Egypt.