U.S. launches major new offensive in Iraq

By Peter Graff

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces launched a big offensive in Iraq with an airborne assault targeting al Qaeda guerrillas on Tuesday, part of a major new countrywide push.

The Americans also raided Baghdad's Shi'ite slum of Sadr City targeting militants they said are linked to Iran. Relatives said a 5-year-old girl was among four killed in the raid.

Suicide bombers driving fuel tankers killed 20 people in an apparent attack on an ancient minority sect in northern Iraq, police said. In a separate attack, a suicide truck bomber killed 10 people and destroyed a bridge linking Baghdad to the north.

Five U.S. service personnel were killed when a military transport helicopter crashed during a routine flight west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

The military said 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops were involved in Operation Lightning Hammer against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda in the fertile area of the Diyala River north of Baghdad.

U.S. and Iraqi soldiers started the operation with an air assault, focusing on militants who fled an earlier crackdown in the provincial capital Baquba.

"Our main goal with Lightning Hammer is to eliminate the terrorist organizations ... and show them that they truly have no safe haven, especially in Diyala," Major-General Benjamin Mixon, U.S. commander in northern Iraq, said in a statement.

The operation was described as part of the larger countrywide Operation Phantom Strike, which U.S. forces announced on Monday.

Al Qaeda is widely seen as trying to influence debate in Washington by stepping up attacks in Iraq before a crucial progress report on the war is delivered to Congress on September 15.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said U.S. forces would launch a series of operations over the next 30 days.

"We fully expect that al Qaeda in Iraq would like to increase their attacks during this critical period," he told reporters in Washington.

WORST VIOLENCE

U.S. military offensives have been under way in Baghdad in the past few months and surrounding provinces like Diyala, a sectarian patchwork, have seen some of Iraq's worst violence.

Police in the Diyala town of Khalis said they found 15 corpses identified as Sunni Arabs, executed by gun shots and dumped on the highway linking Baghdad and Kirkuk.

Police and an oil industry source said gunmen had kidnapped a senior official of Iraq's state oil marketing organization, although details of the incident were sketchy.