World Jul. 30, 2008 - 06:30AM JST ( 17 )

BAQUBA, Iraq —

Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops launched a major assault on Tuesday against rebels in the province of Diyala, an al-Qaida stronghold and one of the most dangerous places in the country.

“The operation began in Diyala early this morning and we have begun raids in some neighborhoods of the city of Baquba,” said Ragib al-Omeiri, chief of the operations bureau in Baquba.

“Iraqi police and the Iraqi army are working together with the U.S. Army,” he said.

In sweeps that aim to clear out the Sunni al-Qaida bastion in the northeast of the country, Iraqi troops netted 20 suspected insurgents, said Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Asskri.

The offensive follows similar Iraqi military operations in the southern provinces of Basra and Maysan, and the northern province of Nineveh, as Iraq forces try to consolidate recent security gains in the war-torn country.

U.S. Army spokesman Major John Hall said the security maneuvers had been exclusively planned and executed by Iraqi forces, a signal of their increasing field competence as American troops took on a secondary role.

“The goal of the operation is to seek out and destroy criminal elements and terrorist threats in Diyala and eliminate smuggling corridors in the surrounding area,” Hall said in an email.

“We look forward to reducing our support footprint as security conditions on the ground permit.”

Interior ministry spokesman Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf had announced on July 13 that the Iraqi military would launch an assault on Diyala.

Earlier this month, the U.S. military said a force of 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and police were amassing in Diyala and its capital Baquba, an area where insurgents regularly carry out attacks.

Asskri said that the security operations codenamed “Glad Tidings” would specifically target al-Qaida operatives and other outlaws.

Police had erected extra checkpoints throughout the city, and residents said that despite the inconvenience they were pleased with the efforts to try to curtail the factional violence that has plagued the city.

“I only wish the operation had come earlier and we would have not lost so many of our sons and friends here due to the bombings,” said Ibrahim Hassan Ahmed, a 32-year-old resident.

Aided by the U.S. military and Iraqi forces, local anti-Qaida groups known as “Sahwa” or Awakening councils, have inflicted severe blows on the militants but they continue to wage attacks in the region.

Several recent strikes have been carried out by female suicide bombers, with one woman killing eight people when she blew herself up as an Awakening patrol passed by in Baquba last week.

Awakening groups began in the western province of Anbar when Sunni tribal leaders turned on their former al-Qaida allies in 2006, and since then similar bodies have sprung up across Iraq, supported and paid for by the U.S. military.

On July 7, another female bomber killed two people and wounded 14 others when she blew herself up at a bustling street market in Baquba, while in June another woman killed 16 in a similar attack in the city.

Colonel Ali al-Karkhi, commanding officer of Iraqi forces in Khan Beni Saad, a town near Baquba, said that “Diyala remains the most dangerous province in Iraq. It is a mini-Iraq. There are Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Christians.”

The U.S. military also believes that many militants in the area are “rogue” members of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia, the militant wing of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s movement.

Diyala, fed by the Euphrates and Diyala rivers, was once the granary of Iraq and the country’s orange capital with its lush orchards.

Wire reports