Sweep for Iraqi militants yields 167 arrests says Allawi

Iraqi authorities have arrested 167 suspected Islamist militants in the past few weeks, most of them non-Iraqi Arabs, Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said today.

Those detained included four top figures in the Islamist network led by

Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Mr Allawi gave the code names of the four men as Abu Anas al-Shami, a Palestinian, Abu Mohammed al-Lubnani from Lebanon, Abu Ahmed al-Tabuki from Saudi Arabia and Abu Omar al-Masri, an Egyptian.

Of the 167 detained militants, 11 were Iraqis who had fought in Afghanistan, Mr Allawi told a news conference.

Some 3,000 followers of Saddam Hussein's former deputy president Izzat Ibrahim had also been detained in the last few weeks, among them two of his top aides.