THE TENSION: OIF Summary, March 16, 2009: Troops in Iraq Nab Terrorists, Destroy Explosives

Dispatches from the Front:

WASHINGTON, March 16, 2009 -- Coalition and Iraqi forces arrested two suspected terrorists, seized weapons and destroyed thousands of pounds of explosives in operations in Iraq in the past five days, military officials reported.

A Mosul special weapons and tactics team, aided by coalition forces, yesterday arrested two suspected terrorists listed on a Central Criminal Court of Iraq warrant in Ninevah province.

When the team moved to arrest a third suspect, the suspect resisted with small-arms fire from inside a house. A SWAT member was shot in the leg, and an Iraqi woman was wounded. She was treated on site but died en route to a hospital.

In other operations:

Iraqi police found a weapons cache March 14 in Subayhat that contained 35 artillery projectiles, 148 mortars, a tank round, a rocket-propelled grenade, six rockets, and various small-arms ammunition and weapons accessories. An explosive ordnance disposal team destroyed the munitions.

In the Karmah region, Iraqi security forces and police, aided by U.S. Marines, seized two weapons caches and a homemade bomb March 13. The caches contained 16 rocket-propelled grenade warheads, two rocket launchers with accessories, four 120 mm mortars and a grenade. Led by civilians’ tips, the forces also found a homemade bomb. An EOD team destroyed the munitions.

The Iraqi army requested the help of a coalition forces EOD team March 12 to destroy a large quantity of homemade explosives, various types of munitions, an improvised explosive device and IED-making materials in Baghdad. Iraqi forces found the materials over the past month. In two days, members of Team 4, Joint Task Force Troy, destroyed about 6,000 pounds of homemade explosives, 1,000 primers, 600 blasting caps, 26 grenades, 25 rounds of ordnance and the IED.