Thursday, March 24 2005 09:35 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Tikrit (Iraq): Eighty-four insurgents were killed in an assault by Iraqi and US forces on a lakeside training camp north of Baghdad, Iraqi commanders said yesterday (Mar 23, 2005), in the bloodiest operation since January's election.

An officer in the interior Ministry's 1st Commando Battalion, who took part in the 17-hour operation on Tuesday (Mar22, 2005) and would only give his name as Colonel Jalil, told agencies that they were able to destroy an important training camp and holding point for insurgents and foreign fighters slipping in from the Syrian border to the west.

"This was a serious military camp with a living section and guard posts," he said at his base in nearby Samarra. "We destroyed their boats and tents."

He said fighters had been using fishing boats to cross the large man-made Tharthar Lake from the tense Al-Anbar province to the west to the tiny village of Ain al-Hilwa on the border with Salaheddin province, another restive area.

The camp was a ramshackle of tents and mud huts in this isolated and remote area devoid of any civilian presence about 200 kilometres north of Baghdad.

Jalil said machine guns, rockets, arms and training manuals including ones on how to make roadside bombs were found at the camp along with fake identification cards, passports and documents that proved the presence of foreigners, long blamed by both US and Iraqi officials for the bulk of the insurgency.

He estimated that some 100 fighters might have been at the camp at the time of the attack.

"After hours of fierce fighting, 84 were killed," said Sabah Kadhim, an advisor at the interior Ministry.