Iraqi National Police discover weapon cache in mosque

Iraqi National Police from the 6th Brigade, 2nd National Police Division, seized weapons and munitions Saturday after they entered and cleared the Al Rumi Mosque in Baghdad's Doura neighborhood.

The weapons and munitions seized consisted of an M16A1 assault rifle with a scope, 19 AK-47 assault rifles with magazines, a PKC machinegun, three Sten guns with silencers, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher with two rounds, and more than 750 7.62mm rounds. The national policemen also found 14 grenades, three grenade fuses and various bomb-making materials.

Later Saturday, Iraqi army soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 5th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, found and defused an improvised-explosive device in west central Baghdad at approximately 12:30 p.m.

Soldiers found the IED, which consisted of a120mm mortar round, in the Al Yarmuk al Bakir Square.

After cordoning off the area surrounding the IED, they defused it to eliminate the threat.

In another incident, Soldiers from MND-B's 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armor Division, discovered a weapons cache while conducting area reconnaissance at approximately 1:55 p.m west of Baghdad.

The cache consisted of two rocket-propelled grenade rounds, a sniper rifle, a shotgun, a PKC rifle, 500 7.62mm rounds and 250 PKC rounds.

An EOD team was dispatched to the scene and performed a controlled detonation to eliminate the cache.

As of Friday, Iraqi Security Forces and MND-B Soldiers have cleared approximately 58,000 buildings, 60 mosques and 50 muhallas, detained more than 125 terrorist suspects, seized more than 1,200 weapons, registered more than 700 weapons and found 35 weapons caches. The combined forces have also removed more than 118,037 cubic meters of trash from the streets of Baghdad.

Source: Multi-National Force-Iraq

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