Iraqi Fugitive Captured

Iraqi police on Sunday arrested a former regional Baath party chairman who was one of 11 fugitives still at large from the U.S. military's list of the 55 most wanted members of Saddam Hussein's regime, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said.

Mohammed Zimam Abdul Razaq — who was No. 41 on the list and the four of spades in the military's "deck of cards" of wanted men — was captured at one of his homes in a suburb of Baghdad, Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Kadhum Ibrahim told journalists. Abdul Razaq did not resist arrest, he said.

Meanwhile, a U.S. official in Baghdad said Saddam loyalists were likely behind one of the most sophisticated guerrilla attacks yet in Iraq — a bold daylight assault by dozens of fighters on a police station in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, in which 25 people were killed, most of them policemen.

Iraqi security officials were investigating the attack amid conflicting reports on who carried it out. Many police officers in Fallujah blamed foreign fighters. One U.S. Military Police soldier was among more than 30 people wounded in Saturday's assault, a U.S. military spokesman said.

During a ceremony in Baghdad to present Abdul Razaq to reporters, Ibrahim appealed to the most sought-after regime fugitive, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, to surrender. Ibrahim promised al-Douri, the former vice chairman of the ruling Revolutionary Command Council, he would be treated with dignity if he turned himself in.

With the latest arrest, 10 figures remain from the most wanted list put out by the military soon after Saddam's regime collapsed in April. The U.S. military has put a $10 million bounty on al-Douri's head and $1 million rewards for the others on the list.

Abdul Razaq — the Baath Party regional chairman in the northern provinces of Nineveh and Tamim, which include the city of Kirkuk — was sitting next to Ibrahim, wearing a traditional black robe.

Ibrahim said police had been monitoring Abdul Razaq for the past 10 days and moved in on his house Sunday with U.S. supervision.

"He did not fight because he is an old man and I do not think that he is willing to fight and be killed," he said. "He will brought to trial, and a trial will decide his fate."

Earlier Sunday, two U.S. convoys were attacked less than a mile apart in Baghdad, and U.S. soldiers in one of the attacks opened fire, killing one Iraqi driving nearby and wounding six others, witnesses and hospital officials said.

In Qaim, near the Syrian border about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, U.S. troops backed by tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles clashed Sunday with Iraqi gunmen, but there was no report of casualties. Residents said gunmen attacked the Americans in retaliation for a U.S. operation against suspected smugglers the day before.

Also on Sunday, the military said an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper died when his vehicle overturned near Baghdad a day earlier. The soldier's name was not released.

The bold, well-organized attack in Fallujah has raised questions over who was behind it — and whether Iraqi security forces are up to the task of battling an increasingly violent insurgency.

Police claimed foreigners, either Arabs or Iranians, were involved and that two of four attackers killed in the battle had Lebanese identification papers. Rumors spread in the city that an Iraqi Shiite Muslim militia with links to Iran, the Badr Brigade, were to blame.

But a U.S. military officer in Baghdad said the attack's sophistication pointed to former members of Saddam Hussein's military.

"This was something put together by people with knowledge of small unit tactics," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It was a complex, well coordinated attack. This would not be the same tactics that al Qaeda would employ. These are military tactics."

The assault involved two simultaneous attacks: One group of gunmen overran the police station, freeing dozens of prisoners being held there, while a second team pinned down Iraqi security forces at a nearby compound with a half-hour barrage of fire to prevent them from helping the policemen.

On Sunday, a roadside bomb went off as a U.S. military patrol passed by in western Baghdad, causing no injuries. The American soldiers opened fire wildly in response, shooting three vehicles, witnesses said. One Iraqi was killed and six wounded, hospital officials said.

"I was driving near the U.S. convoy when I heard an explosion. Then the U.S. soldiers randomly opened fire," said Kadhum Salih, a teacher who was wounded in the left hand.

About a half-mile away, gunmen attacked a U.S. convoy on a highway at about the same time, setting one of the vehicles ablaze. Witnesses said U.S. soldiers pulled three wounded foreigners from the stricken SUV. The witnesses could not tell if the casualties were dead or alive.

The convoy was made up of a military Humvee and two sport utility vehicles, the sort used by American civilians and officials in Iraq. The SUV was heavily burned, its hood pockmarked with bullet holes.

The U.S. command said the convoy was attacked by gunmen in vehicles and that one of the SUVs was damaged. It had no reports of casualties and said the car that was burning belonged to the attackers.

Insurgents have launched a series of bloody attacks in the past week, thought to be part of an escalation aimed at wrecking U.S. plans to hand over power to the Iraqis on June 30.

The Fallujah attack occurred at the end of a bloody week in which about 100 people were killed in suicide bombings at a police station in Iskandariyah and an army recruiting center in Baghdad. Those attacks as well as the Fallujah raid suggest a campaign by insurgents to strike at key institutions of the U.S.-backed Iraqi administration.