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By Nameer Nouredeen TAL AFAR, Iraq (Reuters) - Thousands of Iraqi and U.S. troops launched an assault on the northern city of Tal Afar on Saturday to rid it of suspected insurgents and Iraq's government said it plans attacks on rebels in four other towns. "At 2 a.m. today (2200 GMT), acting on my orders, Iraqi forces commenced an operation to remove all remaining terrorist elements from the city of Tal Afar. These forces are operating with support from the Multi-National Force," Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said in a statement. Jaafari said the troops were responding to appeals for help from "all the different religious and ethnic elements in Tal Afar." The town, west of the northern city of Mosul and near the Syrian border, is mostly populated by ethnic Turkmen. Hospital sources in Tal Afar said the assault started with U.S. air strikes on the centre, adding that there were U.S. tanks surrounding the area and gunfire was heard overnight. Civilians have been evacuated from the town as military operations were stepped up, officials said. U.S. and Iraqi forces have long said Tal Afar was being used as a conduit for equipment and foreign fighters smuggled in from Syria to fight the Kurdish- and Shi'ite Muslim-led Iraqi government and occupying U.S. forces across the country. Beyond any military value, the political importance of an operation in which Iraqi forces are shown on television taking the lead role is considerable; in power for five months and facing an election in December, Jaafari's much-criticised government is keen to show it is capable of restoring security. For Washington, anxious to persuade American voters that it can bring troops home soon as Iraqi forces are trained up, the operation is also a useful testing ground. U.S. forces which have taken the lead in all similar major offensives in the past, such as that on Falluja last November, had previously taken Tal Afar but subsequently pulled out again. Jaafari stressed the lead role played by Iraqi troops. U.S. military spokesmen declined comment. Iraqi television, as it has done over days of preparatory operations, showed repeated film of Iraqi troops in Tal Afar with no sign of U.S. soldiers. Defence Minister Saadoun Dulaimi said that after the assault, government forces were ready to strike insurgents in four other northwestern towns. After telling a news conference that troops had killed 141 insurgents and captured 197 in the past two days at Tal Afar, he said: "We tell our people in Ramadi, Samarra, Rawa and Qaim that we are coming; there will be no refuge for the terrorists, criminals and bloodsuckers." He added that of 17 battalions -- several thousand troops -- involved in the operation, all but three were Iraqi. JORDANIAN VISIT While the attack was under way, Jordan's Prime Minister Adnan Badran left for Baghdad on the first visit by a top Arab official since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, officials said. The Iraqi government has criticised fellow Arab governments for failing to halt Islamic militants flowing into the country or staunch funding for the Sunni insurgency. U.S. ally Jordan, like most other Arab states ruled by Sunni Muslims, has in the past echoed unease at the close relationship of the new Iraqi authorities with Shi'ite, non-Arab Iran. Jaafari and U.S. commanders had warned in recent days that a full assault on Tal Afar was imminent. "The terrorist elements being targeted by this operation are guilty of blatant crimes against its people. They are enemies of Iraq," Jaafari said. "They have committed murder. They have driven people from their homes. They want to deny the citizens of Tal Afar their future in a democratic and peaceful Iraq. We want to guarantee those rights. These operations are being conducted precisely for that purpose." The insurgents are mainly drawn from Iraq's Sunni Arab community. Sunnis account for some 20 percent of the population and have dominated Iraqi politics for decades, under ousted leader Saddam Hussein and before. A U.S. military spokesman said last week intelligence reports suggested some 20 percent of insurgents in Tal Afar were "foreign fighters". He said U.S. and Iraqi forces had been trying to wipe out the insurgency since May. They have so far failed, but he said the growing number of U.S.-trained Iraqi government troops -- there are now 190,000 of them, he said -- should mean the resources were in place to quell future insurgencies. (Additional reporting by Sebastian Alison, Mussab Al- Khairalla and Mariam Karouny in Baghdad, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul)
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