8 armed group members detained southwest of Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: Iraqi army forces on Thursday arrested eight members of an al-Qaeda-related group during a security operation southwest of Kirkuk, according to an army official. “During a wide-scale search campaign in al-Sous village, Rashad district in southwest of Kirkuk, eight members of the so-called ‘Ansar al-Sunna Army’ were captured,” the commander of the fourth regiment in the Iraqi army, Staff Lt. Col. Shawan Ghareeb, told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The forces found two rocket propelled grenades (RPG), three bombs and an amount of ammunition,” he added. Jaish Ansar al-Sunna, or Army of the Followers of the Sunna is a militant group based in northern and central Iraq, and includes both Kurdish and Sunni Arab as well as foreign fighters. The group is thought to have links with other Islamic organizations operating in Iraq including, the formerly Abu Musab al-Zarqawi backed, Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (al-Qaeda in Iraq). Kirkuk, an oil-rich and mixed city of Kurds, Turkmen, Christians and Arabs, lies 250 km northeast of Baghdad. SH (S)/SR 1