By Nameer Nouredeen
TAL AFAR, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq’s government said it launched thousands of troops against rebels in the city of Tal Afar on Saturday and ordered the nearby border with Syria closed to stem what Baghdad calls an influx of foreign fighters.
Keen to show off the muscle of their U.S.-trained forces, ministers said other towns were in the line of fire and state television ran repetitive footage from recent days in Tal Afar of Iraqi soldiers hunting and detaining men described as rebels.
Residents reported U.S. air strikes overnight, gunfire and an encirclement of U.S. armour in parts of the town as Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari announced an offensive had begun.
"At 2 a.m. today (2300 BST), acting on my orders, Iraqi forces commenced an operation to remove all remaining terrorist elements from the city of Tal Afar," he said in a statement.
Advertisement starts
Advertisement ends
Later in the day, a dust storm hindered the offensive, U.S. officers in Tal Afar said. State television ran fresh footage, however, of more arrests and soldiers moving through a town that U.S. troops have seized in the past before withdrawing again.
Jaafari said the troops were responding to appeals for help from "all the different religious and ethnic elements in Tal Afar". The town, west of the northern city of Mosul and near the Syrian border, is mostly populated by ethnic Turkmen.
Civilians had been taken out of the town in recent days as military operations were stepped up, officials said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have long said Tal Afar was being used as a conduit for equipment and foreign Sunni Arab fighters smuggled in from Syria to fight the Shi’ite and Kurdish-led Iraqi government and occupying U.S. forces across the country.
Late on Saturday, the Iraqi government announced the closure of the Syrian border from Sunday morning.
"As part of continuing security efforts, we have decided to close the international border with Syria, and mainly at Rabiah," Interior Minister Bayan Jabor said, reading a statement by Jaafari on television.
Rabiah, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the northern city of Mosul, would be under curfew for 10 hours from 8 p.m., weapons would be banned and the border zone closed to non-residents.
POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Beyond any military value, the political importance of an operation in which Iraqi forces are shown on television taking the lead role is considerable; in power for five months and facing an election in December, Jaafari’s much-criticised government is keen to show it is capable of restoring security.
For Washington, anxious to persuade U.S. voters it can bring troops home soon as Iraqi forces are trained, the operation is also a useful showcase for the new Iraqi army.
U.S. forces have taken the lead in all similar major offensives in the past, such as that on Falluja last November.
Jaafari stressed the lead role played by Iraqi troops. U.S. military spokesmen declined to comment.
Defence Minister Saadoun Dulaimi said that, after the assault, government forces were ready to strike insurgents in four other northwestern towns.
After telling a news conference that troops had killed 141 insurgents and captured 197 in the past two days at Tal Afar, he said: "We tell our people in Ramadi, Samarra, Rawa and Qaim that we are coming; there will be no refuge for the terrorists, criminals and bloodsuckers."
He added that of 17 battalions -- several thousand troops -- involved in the operation, all but three were Iraqi.
Dulaimi gave no indication of when operations might start in the other towns, but said action would be swift.
"This operation will take less time than you think...You will see in the next two days that our forces are capable and will flush the terrorists out and wipe them out."
While the attack was under way, Jordanian Prime Minister Adnan Badran flew to Baghdad on the first visit by a senior Arab official since the U.S. invasion in 2003, and Jaafari urged more to come.
"This visit means a great deal to us and marks a great political turning point. I call on all the Arab states to follow the Jordanian initiative. Today’s visit has broken a barrier and sent a political message," he said.
Iraq has criticised fellow Arab countries for failing to halt Islamic militants flowing into the country or to staunch funding for the Sunni insurgency.
U.S. ally Jordan, like most other Arab states ruled by Sunni Muslims, has in the past echoed unease at the close relationship of the new Iraqi authorities with Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran.
Jaafari and U.S. commanders had warned that a full assault on Tal Afar was imminent. "The terrorist elements being targeted by this operation are guilty of blatant crimes against its people. They are enemies of Iraq," Jaafari said.
The insurgents are drawn mainly from Iraq’s Sunni Arab community. Sunnis account for about 20 percent of the population and have dominated Iraqi politics for decades, under Saddam Hussein, who will be tried for mass killing next month.
Having shunned an election in January, many Sunnis are now mobilising to vote, possibly against, a new constitution in a referendum on October 15 and in a new election due in December.
(Additional reporting by Sebastian Alison, Mussab Al- Khairalla, Mariam Karouny, Alastair Macdonald and Omar al-Ibadi in Baghdad, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul)
