*EPF501 01/02/2004
Sanctity of Iraqi Mosque Upheld in Raid, U.S. Military Official Says
(Defense Department Report, January 2: Iraq Operational Update) (530)

A senior U.S. military official says that U.S. and Iraqi soldiers took great care to use the least amount of force necessary and to preserve the sanctity of the al-Tabul Mosque during a raid in southwestern Baghdad January 1.

U.S. Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director for coalition operations, told reporters in Baghdad that the mosque was raided because Iraqi citizens had identified it as a hub of insurgency operations.

During a January 2 briefing, Kimmitt said 32 individuals were detained following the raid and there were no casualties. He said there is no evidence to support reports that coalition forces tore pages from the mosque's Koran.

"Despite the clear use of this mosque for criminal, terrorist and anti-coalition activities," Kimmitt said, "the greatest care was taken by coalition forces to uphold the sanctity of the mosque and to use the minimal amount of force necessary to conduct the operation."

Due to religious sensitivities, Kimmitt said military forces do not enter religious sites without reliable intelligence. He said the results of the raid show that the mosque "was being used for purposes other than free religious expression."

The officer also provided a list of the weapons confiscated at the mosque, which included sticks of high explosives, blasting caps, dynamite, gunpowder, batteries, propellants, rifles, mortar tubes, ammunition rounds, a training device for a shoulder-fired SA-7 surface-to-air missile, and rocket propelled and hand-made grenades.

Kimmitt was asked about a New Year's Eve bombing of a Baghdad restaurant. He said the Iraqi Police Service is investigating the incident. He described it as "the first large-scale attack we've seen on a purely civilian target of this kind."

Kimmitt also confirmed that an American OH-58 Kiowa helicopter assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division was shot down by hostile fire January 2 in Fallujah in Central Iraq.

At the same press briefing, Daniel Senor, the Coalition Provisional Authority's senior advisor, reported on the training of Iraqi security personnel. Senor said 100 members of the new Iraqi Diplomatic Protection Service graduated on January 2 and would be part of a new division of the Iraqi Facilities Protection Service established to protect foreign embassies in Iraq.

Senor advised that 60 members of the new Iraqi Correctional Service will graduate this week, followed by an additional 200 next week.

In other graduation news, he said 450 new Iraqi police officers will graduate this month from the Jordanian International Policy Training Center in Amman.

On the military front, Senor said 600 new Iraqi Army officer-candidates have departed for 11 weeks of training in Jordan and that the 2nd Army Battalion will be graduating next week.

Asked about ethnic tensions in Iraq, Senor said: "We have been struck by the limited number of internecine, regional or inter-ethnic attacks since liberation." He added that there was a general sense of unity in the country and that there have been few attacks that could be characterized as Kurdish versus Arab or Kurdish vs. Turkmen.

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

Return to Public File Main Page

Return to Public Table of Contents