Iraq - The New Iraqi Army Takes Over

This is a good report considering it's from Reuters.

TAL AFAR, Iraq (Reuters) - The Iraqi army has killed up to 200 insurgents in the northern town of Tal Afar, commanders said on Monday.

The major assault is causing dismay among some of the country's Sunni Arab minority and comes just a month ahead of a vote on a constitution which is already dividing the country.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari defied a $100,000 bounty placed on his head by a militant Islamic group to visit the scene of the insurgency, while a senior officer in Tal Afar said he expected the fighting to be over by Thursday.

The Iraqi army, backed by U.S. troops, launched an assault early on Saturday against an estimated 350-500 insurgents in the town near the Syrian border.

Iraq's Third Army Brigade launched a fresh offensive on Monday, killing 40 insurgents and arresting 21 "terrorist emirs," or senior insurgent leaders, the brigade's media officer said, in an operation ending at around 5.15 p.m. (1415 BST).

"We also seized a cache of heavy weaponry, including mortars, artillery, explosives, TNT, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenades," he told Reuters.

Abdelaziz Jasim, the defence ministry official in charge of operations in Tal Afar, said his forces were nearly in control of western areas of the city.

"Overall 157 terrorists have been killed and 291 arrested since the beginning of the operations," he told a news briefing in Baghdad before the new offensive in Tal Afar.

[...]

But Jaafari had given orders to take special care to protect civilian lives, Jabor added, saying: "This is the first clean military operation that has ever happened in Iraq."

Jaafari himself went to Tal Afar on Monday, disregarding a bounty of $100,000 (54,000 pounds) placed on his head by Iraqi militant group The Islamic Army in Iraq for ordering the assault.

The government has made much of the fact that for the first time since the U.S. invasion the Iraqi army is playing the lead role in the fighting, while U.S. troops play a support role.

President Jalal Talabani said in Washington on Sunday that Iraq had enough troops to take over frontline duties from the United States.

This is too much good news from Iraq for big media to cover it.

And the US has handed over security in Najaf to the Iraqi army.

Day by day the Iraqi army grows stronger while the terrorists grow weaker.
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