Coalition Forces Apprehend 11 Suspected Terrorists

American Forces Press Service

Nov. 4, 2008 - Coalition forces continued to pressure al-Qaida in Iraq networks yesterday and today, detaining 11 suspected terrorists in the country's central and northern regions, military officials reported.

In operations today:

-- Coalition forces in Mosul captured a man who reports suggest has connections to the city's senior al-Qaida leaders. The man surrendered himself to ground forces without incident.

-- An operation targeting al-Qaida leadership networks in Baghdad led to the detention of one suspect.

-- West of Baghdad, a suspected terrorist believed to facilitate the movement of car-bomb materials was captured, and four additional suspects were detained for further questioning.

-- Forces in Tikrit captured a man who reports suggest provides weapons to terrorists in exchange for their promise to conduct operations against coalition forces.

-- In Kirkuk, coalition forces captured a suspected terrorist who allegedly works within al-Qaida's security and courier networks.

Yesterday, coalition forces captured a suspected roadside-bomb cell member and detained another man assessed to be his associate during an operation yesterday in Tikrit. Also yesterday, Multinational Division Baghdad soldiers found a weapons cache in Baghdad. Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division's Company B, 4th Battalion, 42nd Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, found 13 AK-47 assault rifles, 20 AK-47 magazines, two digital decoder boards, three blasting cap initiators, a hand grenade fuse and a magnetic "sticky" bomb in the Iraqi capital's Mansour district.

Separately, Iraqi army soldiers seized a weapons cache in Baghdad's Sadr City district yesterday.

Over the past two weeks, officials said, Iraqi soldiers have been gathering up an enemy weapons stockpile they found in Baghdad's Sadr City district. An explosive ordnance detachment inventoried the cache, which consisted of 35 mortar rounds of various sizes, two rocket pods, 20 pounds of bulk C-4 explosive, 5 pounds of stick propellant, two capacitors, a 100 mm projectile, two 73 mm fragmentary rockets, 15 40 mm projectile grenades, 49 propellant charges, five illumination grenades, five 85 mm rockets, three 70 mm rockets, three mortar fuses, two 152 mm projectiles and two smoke grenades.

(Compiled from Multinational Force Iraq and Multinational Corps Iraq news releases.)