From Arab Monitor, Jan. 8:

US occupation troops burst into the Umm al-Qura Mosque compound in western Baghdad and ransacked the offices of the headquarter of the Association of Muslim Scholars. The troops arrested a member of the Association, two employees and two guardsmen. Pictures taken by Reuters TV showed that many doors had been forced open and explosive charges and shotgun shells strewn on the ground, while Christian crosses had been scrawled on the shelves used for deploying the worshippers' shoes.

Nonetheless, the US spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson declared the soldiers had taken into due account the fact that they were raiding a place of worship. Still today, the US occupation troops, aided by Iraqi armed forces, carried out raids in the region west of Baghdad against the villages of the Zowba tribe. During the raid, 35 people, including women, children and old men, were arrested. The Association of Muslim Scholars called on the US occupation forces and the Iraqi National Guard to immediately release six women.

See our last post on Iraq, and the Association of Muslim Scholars.