Terrorists, Weapons, and Chemical Weapons Captured

A slew of happenings from Fallujah and Mosul yesterday, all the news positive. Abu Saeed, a top aid to Zarqawi, has been captured. Via Chad at ITB this AP piece:

A lieutenant of Iraq's most feared terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was captured a few days ago in Mosul, the government's national security adviser said Thursday. Qassem Dawoud identified the alleged lieutenant only as Abu Saeed but gave no further details.

Second, it looks like the terrorists were attempting to make chemical weapons in Fallujah. The Cabal of Doom has a few photos of the alleged lab. This Rueters report, via James Joyner, seems to indicate that the lab was either at the location shown in the first picture of this post or image #48 here:

A laboratory for the manufacture of chemical weapons has been found in Falluja, an Iraqi minister said on Thursday, but Marines in the city said they were not aware of any such discovery. "Soldiers from the Iraqi National Guard found a chemical laboratory that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons," Minister of State Kassim Daoud told a news conference. "They also found in the lab booklets and instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. They even talked about the production of anthrax."

Last, it seems we keep finding more and more weapons in Fallujah. Two days ago I reported a biographical sketch of Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi who ran the mosque where these weapons were found. Via James who e-mailed me this Bloomberg report:

Iraqi forces and U.S. Marines searching a mosque in Fallujah ``discovered the largest weapons cache to date'' in the city, where the coalition has been carrying out an assault on insurgents, the military said.

The stockpile of heavy weaponry was found yesterday in and around the compound of the Sa'ad Abi Bin Waqas Mosque in the Hey Al-Shorta District, the military said today in a statement e-mailed from the capital, Baghdad. The mosque was used by Muslim cleric Abdullah al-Janabi, leader of the city's rebels, to preach ``anti-coalition rhetoric,'' the military said.

The number of weapons recovered in the mosque complex is ``stunning,'' and is ``enough to mount an insurgency across the country,'' the Associated Press cited Lieutenant Colonel Dan Wilson of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force as saying. The military didn't indicate how many weapons were seized.

To our fighting men and women in Iraq: keep up the good work and God speed!

Posted by: Rusty at 12:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 414 words, total size 4 kb.