Iraqis capture aide to Zarqawi

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi officials Thursday announced the capture of a key aide to Jordanian terrorist suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and said soldiers had discovered a “chemical bomb” factory in Fallujah, as insurgent rocket attacks brought tragedy and mayhem to a camp of Nepalese security contractors in the center of Baghdad.

The U.S. military announced that its forces had discovered a huge weapons cache in a mosque compound in Fallujah and said another 81 insurgent suspects had been arrested during an ongoing sweep of an area south of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the police chief in Basra said his men had captured several foreign fighters who had fled Fallujah.

Iraqi National Security Adviser Qassem Dawoud identified the seized al-Zarqawi lieutenant as Abu Saeed and said he had been captured in Mosul in northern Iraq a few days ago. But he declined to say whether Saeed was Iraqi and what role he played in al-Zarqawi’s al Qaeda-affiliated organization, which has claimed credit for several beheadings and car bombings.

Speaking at a news conference, Dawoud said security forces searching for terrorist dens in the southwestern part of Fallujah, the insurgent stronghold overrun by U.S.-led forces earlier this month, discovered the chemical laboratory. The lab contained manuals on making explosives and poisons, including anthrax, he said. He showed photographs of a shelf containing chemicals.

Dawoud’s remarks coincided with a U.S. military statement about discovery of a huge weapons cache in a Fallujah mosque used by a cleric preaching anti-U.S. resistance.

The main prayer building in the Saad Abi Bin Waqas Mosque contained “small arms, artillery shells, heavy machine guns, and anti-tank mines,” the statement said. Other buildings in the compound “had mortar systems, rocket propelled grenades, launchers, recoilless rifles and parts of surface-to-air weapons systems,” it added.

Iraqi and U.S. forces discovered a truck in the compound that appeared to be a mobile explosives factory, it said. Another area contained documents that detailed interrogations of recent kidnap victims.

Basra Police Chief Brig. Mohammed Khazim told Knight Ridder that a Lib-yan, two Saudis and two Tunisians were arrested at a highway checkpoint in Qurnah, southeast of Basra, after police stopped the sport utility vehicle they were riding in late Wednesday. The men confessed they had fled Fallujah and were headed to Basra, an oil hub near Kuwait, “to attack the police stations and multinational force compounds,” Khazim said.

A sixth man, a Sudanese, was arrested Thursday, he said.

Resistance to the U.S. military presence in Iraq has become a rallying cry in some radical mosques around the Muslim world. Khazim said those arrested in Basra said they were responding to a religious decree, or fatwa, issued by clerics in Saudi Arabia.

“We have evidence that there has been some support for these terrorists from Kuwait and also from Saudi Arabia,” Khazim said, referring to private sponsorship.

Baghdad’s clear autumn skies were interrupted by piercing rocket attacks that struck around the so-called Green Zone, the heavily protected neighborhood where most government ministries and foreign embassies are located.

The six rockets struck a camp of private security contractors, mainly former Nepalese Gurkha soldiers, killing four people and wounding 12 others, security officials said.

The rocket strikes sent dark black smoke curling above the area.

Two separate car bombs hit the city of Samarra north of the capital, and early reports said eight police and four civilians were wounded.

Thousands of U.S., British and Iraqi forces combing through an anarchic region on Baghdad’s southern doorstep captured 81 suspected insurgents, the U.S. military said.

Since the offensive began three days ago in the area, known as the “triangle of death” because of its lawlessness, arrests have totaled 116 people, it said.

The U.S. Marines statement suggested the sweep had led to little combat. The insurgents “have sought to avoid large, decisive engagements, preferring to hit, run and evade,” the statement said. It added: “Success typically comes one or two insurgents at a time.”