BAGHDAD – U.S. and Iraqi forces on Tuesday raided a sweets factory being used as a headquarters by suspected Sunni insurgents in northern Iraq, which has seen a recent rise in violence as militants have fled a nearly 4-month-old security crackdown in Baghdad.
The U.S. and Iraqi military offered different accounts of the raid on the sweets factory in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
The American military said a joint U.S.-Iraqi force had found an ice cream factory in Mosul in which “individuals associated with the Islamic State of Iraq were operating from,” referring to a Sunni insurgent group, but said it had no reports of mass explosives or chemical fertilizer being discovered and destroyed.
“We also detained an unspecified number of anti-Iraqi forces,” the military said in an e-mailed statement.
Iraqi army commander Brig. Gen. Nour al-Din Hussein, however, said earlier that it was an lollipop factory and the forces found boxes of explosives and two tons of fertilizer in the basement of the facility.
Hussein said the entry room to the al-Arij factory was booby-trapped and the building was empty because the workers fled after apparently being tipped off to the raid. He added that an antiaircraft gun was hidden on the roof.
The troops, who found candy boxes filled with explosives, oxygen cylinders and two tons of fertilizer in the basement, spent three hours destroying the payload in controlled blasts in an industrial area of Mosul, Hussein said.
Suspected Sunni insurgents also bombed and badly damaged a span over the main north-south highway leading from Baghdad on Tuesday – the third bridge attack in as many days in an apparent campaign against key transportation arteries.
The Bush administration, meanwhile, stepped up pressure on the political front, sending the No. 2 State Department official to Baghdad, where he met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi officials.
Al-Maliki assured Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte that his government would persist in its efforts to pass a controversial oil law as well as a bill allowing former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party to return to government jobs and join the military.
U.S. military deaths
The latest identifications reported by the U.S. military of personnel killed in Iraq:
Army Sgt. Dariek E. Dehn, 32, Spangle, Wash.; killed June 2 in Sharqat by an explosive; assigned to the 6th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
Army Cpl. Llythaniele Fender, 21, Medical Lake, Wash.; killed Sunday in Karbala by an explosive; assigned to the 5th Battalion, 5th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, Fort Lewis.
Army Cpl. Meresebang Ngiraked, 21, Koror, Republic of Palau; killed Sunday in Karbala by an explosive; assigned to the 5th Battalion, 5th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, Fort Lewis, Wash.
Army Spc. Adam G. Herold, 23, Omaha, Neb.; killed Sunday in Karbala by an explosive; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 377th Parachute Field Artillery Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska.
Air Force Airman 1st Class Eric M. Barnes, 20, Lorain, Ohio; killed Sunday by an explosive about 100 miles south of Baghdad; assigned to the 90th Logistics Readiness Squadron, F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.
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