59 Iraqi troops arrested

BAGHDAD — Iraqi and U.S. special forces have arrested at least 59 army officers and enlisted men accused in killings, bombings and kidnappings in the latest case linking elements of the Iraqi army to sectarian militias and criminal gangs, authorities announced Wednesday.

Meanwhile, nearly 60 people were killed in car bombings and shootings across Iraq, officials said.

The violence and arrests came on a day that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was in New York telling the U.N. General Assembly that his nation was making progress in deterring insurgents and building strong governmental institutions.

“The new Iraq,” Maliki told the international gathering, “is governed by constitutional institutions, where freedom of opinion, belief and expression are all respected. This Iraq will not retreat from its democratic choice for which our people have paid a very high price.”

Maliki acknowledged, however, that Iraq still needed help from its neighbors and the United Nations to stem the flow of militants and weaponry into the country. “Today we feel optimistic the countries of the region now realize the danger of the terrorist onslaught against Iraq and that it is not in their interest for Iraq to be weak,” he said.

The U.S.-Iraqi raid Tuesday on the Defense Ministry’s military academy in the east Baghdad neighborhood of Rustamiya provided the latest evidence of the Iraqi army’s continuing struggle to weed out lawless elements. Authorities said the academic dean was the ringleader of a criminal gang on campus. The group was wanted in connection with killings, bombings and kidnappings, including the slaying two years ago of the school’s director, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. The present director, kidnapped several weeks ago, was freed Tuesday.

“The individuals detained had allegedly used security personnel to murder, kidnap and conduct attacks using improvised explosive devices and EFPs,” or explosively formed penetrators, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner said.

The armor-piercing explosives, capable of blowing a hole in a tank, are associated mainly with Shiite Muslim militias. The U.S. has accused Iran of supplying the design and materials for such explosives, which Tehran has denied.

Iraq has struggled greatly with the influence of both Shiite and Sunni militants in its security forces, particularly the inroads made by Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Baghdad’s Shiite districts.

This month, the U.S. military arrested an Iraqi commander suspected of expelling Sunnis from neighborhoods and ordering attacks on American soldiers. The officer had led the Baha Araji battalion, a special unit created by the Defense Ministry under pressure from Sadr loyalists in government. The unit consisted mostly of Mahdi Army members and was broken up in May by the Defense Ministry; however, many members remained loyal to the Mahdi Army and stayed together in military companies, officials said.

The leadership of one of the top-rated units in the Iraqi military, the 2-2 battalion, was arrested on charges of homicide and kidnapping in the spring. Its members were accused of working in tandem with the Mahdi Army in east Baghdad.

“This is very much a work in progress, and it’s most important that the government of Iraq and their ministries step up to those challenges and hold their people accountable,” U.S. military spokesman Bergner said Wednesday at a news conference in Baghdad. The Iraqi army’s ability to take over from American forces is deemed crucial for any large-scale U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. A student at the military college painted a picture of a siege as the Iraqi and U.S. special forces entered the compound Tuesday.

The special forces said they were looking for militia members, said the student, who was afraid to give his name. Gunshots rang out on the campus, with some of the wanted soldiers apparently clashing with the U.S.-Iraqi forces.

Staffers and students were rounded up on the academy’s playing field, where Iraqi special forces screened them against pictures of men on their wanted list, the student said.

An Iraqi military investigation had been underway for three months, Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Askari told The Times.

“They are gangs. They have nothing to do with militias,” he added. “They have been doing it for money.”

Meanwhile on Wednesday, a double car bomb killed 32 people in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Bayaa in west Baghdad, police said. That toll would make it the deadliest single attack in the capital since June.

Bayaa had a mixed population until the spring, when sectarian fighting resulted in the expulsion of most Sunni residents. The attack came in just before sunset, when Muslims break the daylong fast kept during the holy month of Ramadan.

Abdul-Hadi Saidi, 45, had been preparing the family dinner to break the fast when the bombing shook his home. “I went outside to see what happened. I saw a couple of civilian cars burning. There were many people screaming and moaning, women, children, and elderly,” said Saidi, a government employee.

In the north, at least 20 deaths were reported in Nineveh province, where four car bombs exploded. One of them blew up by the house of a tribal leader outside Sinjar, near the Syrian border. The U.S. military said the tribal leader was a critic of the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Six deaths were reported in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, in a bombing and a shooting. The British army this month left its bases in the southern city, and violence among Shiite militias has increased.

The U.S. military, which says that overall violence has declined since an increase in the number of American forces in Iraq this year, acknowledged an upsurge in the last week.

“There has indeed been an increase in violence in the last few days, largely in areas in which Al Qaeda in Iraq operates,” Bergner told reporters.

Another Sunni militant group, the Islamic State of Iraq, has declared an offensive for Ramadan.

In Baghdad, a U.S. soldier died Tuesday from small-arms fire, the U.S. military reported. His unit was searching for bombs planted on streets in the capital.

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Times staff writer Maggie Farley at the United Nations and special correspondents in Mosul and Baghdad contributed to this report.