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    At Least 16 Dead in Attacks in Iraq
    By Solomon Moore
    The New York Times

    Tuesday 01 January 2008

    Baghdad - Bomb attacks on Monday killed at least 16 people, including two Iraqi soldiers, in one of the most violent days in recent weeks even as Iraqi security forces stepped up their operations against insurgents across the country.

    In the deadliest attack, a truck bomb exploded at a checkpoint manned by neighborhood security volunteers in the Tarmiya area north of Baghdad. The blast killed at least five volunteers, who are members of a Sunni Arab tribe that has turned against the insurgency in recent months. At least four children were also killed in the explosion. Tarmiya was once a stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

    In the restive Diyala province 60 miles north of the capital explosions killed five people and a woman detonated an explosive vest wounding at least five people in Baquba.

    The attacks occurred two days after the appearance on Web sites of an hour-long audio recording by Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In the message Mr. bin Laden speaks at length about Iraq and the Awakening Councils, a collection of more than 300 tribal councils comprising at least 70,000 Sunni Arabs who have renounced Al Qaeda and have joined forces with the American military.

    Bin Laden warns his followers of "plots that are being hatched by the Zionist-Crusader alliance" to "steal the fruit of blessed jihad" in Iraq and urges them to resist American overtures.

    "Recruiting hypocrite chieftains of tribes is one axis," said Mr. bin Laden, according a translation posted by the United States government's Open Source Center. "America, along with its agents in the region, is seeking through the other axis to form a new government - this government will be called a national unity government."

    Meanwhile, American and Iraqi forces staged several sweeps throughout the country against suspected Sunni Arab insurgents.

    Commandos of the Iraqi national police said they killed seven suspected militants in the northern oil hub of Beiji.

    In the southern city of Hilla, Brigadier Abdul Amer Kamel Abdullah of the Iraqi army said that his soldiers arrested 70 people over the weekend.

    "Sixty of them were Al Qaeda fighters," he said. The men were responsible for the assassination of a police commander five months ago, Mr. Abdullah said.

    Kurdish Peshmerga fighters swept into the Diyala village of Jawalah, north of Baquba, and arrested at least a dozen Sunni Arab men and in the northern city of Kirkuk, American soldiers and Iraqi police detained 17 suspected militants.

    And in Mahmoudiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, an airborne force detained 18 suspected insurgents.

    Monday's violence highlighted the fragility of a weeks-long downturn in attacks in Iraq. American and Iraqi military officials have touted the recent lull as a success brought on by the recent surge of American forces, the recruitment of more than 100,000 Iraqi police officers and the 70,000 Sunni Arab security volunteers.

    But earlier this week, General David H. Petraeus, the overall commander of United States forces in Iraq, characterized those security gains as "reversible."