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* Story Highlights
* Iraqis gather before planned operation against al Qaeda in Iraq
* New video apparently shows former Iraqi police official joining
insurgency
* Ex-official in Saddam Hussein's government, his family killed in
home invasion BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A major movement of Iraqi forces gathered on
Sunday in Mosul as a prelude to a planned offensive against Islamic
fighters loyal to al Qaeda, an Iraqi government spokesman said.
Neighbors react outside the Baghdad home where a former Bathist official
was killed along with his family. The forces include troops, special forces, tanks and Iraqi air force
support, Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari told the
state-run television network al-Iraqia. Iraqi police and the army will
play the lead role and will be supported by multi-national forces, he said. Al-Askari said multi-national forces and members of the country's
"awakening councils" -- a frequent target of the jihadists -- will
participate in the offensive as well. Awakening councils are largely
Sunni Arab groups that are cooperating with U.S. troops against al Qaeda
in Iraq. A security official in Mosul told CNN that reinforcements from Baghdad
would begin arriving Sunday and continue over the coming two weeks. Plans for the offensive were announced the week after a police official
was killed by a suicide bomber, and 34 people were killed and 224
wounded in a separate blast in western Mosul, about 400 kilometers north
of Baghdad. In a separate incident, a videotape of a man claiming to be Diyala
province's deputy police commissioner saying he was joining the
insurgency was posted Sunday on the Internet. The video -- posted online by counterterrorism specialist Laura
Mansfield -- shows the man, who identifies himself as Ayad Ismael
Mheimed, making a statement to the camera and then handing over his gun
and badge to jihadists with the Islamic State of Iraq, a group said to
have connections to al Qaeda. Mheimed was the Diyala deputy police chief until about six weeks ago
when he resigned, a Diyala province security official told CNN. The
official said he quit his job after receiving threats from al Qaeda in
Iraq and after his son was kidnapped and released. And on Saturday, the leader of a "concerned local citizen" group was
killed in northern Baghdad when a bomb exploded in his car, the
coalition military said in a written statement. The U.S. backed
"concerned local citizen" program is intended to beef up security for
individual tribes and groups, who are trained to conduct their own
security operations and patrols but work under the authority of
coalition and Iraqi security forces. On Saturday night, knife-wielding home invaders attacked a former
official in Saddam Hussein's government, killing him, his wife, son and
daughter, an Interior Ministry official said. Ahmen Ali was a Baghdad city official before the U.S.-led invasion, the
official said.
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