BAQOUBA, Iraq – Until dawn broke, officials did not think of Muqdadiyah as an especially vulnerable place. Police occasionally raided nearby villages, as they did last weekend, hauling rebel suspects to cells in a courthouse compound in the city center.
At 5:45 a.m. Tuesday, about 100 masked men came to break them out. Descending from a dozen cars and pickup trucks laden with mortars and grenades, they surrounded the compound and blasted away, killing at least 20 police officers and guards and freeing 33 prisoners in one of Iraq’s boldest insurgent raids in months. Police said at least 18 of the escaped prisoners were insurgent suspects rounded up on Sunday.
And early today, suspected insurgents stormed a police station in the town of Madain, killing four police officers and wounding at least five, authorities said.
Tuesday’s highly coordinated frontal attack, which featured car bombs to repel reinforcements, was a potent reminder of the Sunni-led insurgency’s capacity to strike at Iraqi government and U.S. targets, despite almost constant sweeps against their forces.
In 90 minutes of fighting, the rebels destroyed 12 police cars and set fire to the courthouse and adjacent police station, holding off outnumbered U.S. and Iraqi forces. Witnesses described a withering firefight and bold defense by the police and guards, who reportedly ran out of ammunition and were overrun on the roof of the jail.
Reinforcements, delayed by insurgent booby traps, eventually chased down some of the attackers, capturing eight as they fled in two vehicles.
At least 10 of the attackers were killed, the U.S. military said, and 18 police officers and two American soldiers were wounded.
In other violence Tuesday, a roadside bomb killed one policeman and wounded three in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, authorities said.
A U.S. soldier with the 4th Infantry Division was killed by small-arms fire Tuesday while patrolling in western Baghdad, the U.S. military reported. At least 2,315 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Police reported discovering eight more blindfolded corpses in west Baghdad, some of them under a highway and showing signs of torture, officials said.
In Suwera, 50 miles south of Baghdad, four more corpses were found on the bank of the Tigris river.
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