Official seals border with Syria

The bodies of 18 men were found in a town south of Baghdad.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The Iraqi prime minister sealed the northern border crossing into Syria on Saturday after complaints that the neighboring country was not doing enough to stop crossings by foreign fighters, and he imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the area near the Rabiaa frontier post.
The order went out as Iraqi forces, backed by American soldiers, swept into Tal Afar, an insurgent stronghold about 60 miles to the east, conducting house-to-house searches and battering down walls with armored vehicles in a second bid to clean the city of militant fighters.
The order by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari was read on Iraqi television by Interior Minister Bayan Jabr. The decree closed the border to all transportation, including the railroad, except for vehicles with special permission from the Interior Ministry.
Iraq and the United States have complained bitterly that Syria has done too little to block the flow of so-called foreign fighters into Iraq across the long and porous border.
Jabr said the closure was in effect until further notice.
Bodies found
Some 30 miles south of Baghdad, meanwhile, police found the bodies of 18 men who had been handcuffed and shot to death in Iskandariya, a town where dozens of killings have been reported in escalating vengeance killings by Shiite Muslim and Sunni Arab "death squads."
"Two days ago gunmen in police uniforms broke into their houses in a Shiite neighborhood of Iskandariya," police Capt. Adel Kitab said of the latest victims.
In the capital, Baghdad International Airport reopened early Saturday after a day's closure in a payment dispute between the government and a British security company. Global Strategies Group said it agreed to resume security work after the government promised to pay half of what the company said it is owed.
Iraqi police said two mortar shells were fired into the Green Zone that houses the U.S. Embassy, the Iraqi parliament and government offices. There was no word on casualties or damage.
Offensive
In the Tal Afar offensive, which had been expected for weeks, coalition forces faced several hundred lightly armed insurgents in the largely deserted city, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad and about 60 miles east of the Syrian border.
There was heavy gunfire in the Sarai district, the oldest part of the city and the major insurgent stronghold.
"I can see why the terrorists chose this place for a fight -- it's like a big funnel of death," Sgt. William Haslett of Rocklin, Calif., said of the twisting streets and alleys in the old city.
Al-Jaafari announced the 2 a.m. start of the offensive in a statement issued early Saturday. At a news conference later, he said the insurgents had been trying "to isolate Tal Afar from the political process as we are preparing for the referendum on the draft constitution."
Tal Afar residents were largely Turkomen, with ethnic and cultural ties to Turkey to the north. They are mostly Sunni Muslims but had been governed since the ouster of Saddam Hussein by a U.S.-backed Shiite Muslim city government and police force.
The interior minister said 48 insurgents had been captured so far, along with mortars and communications gear. He said Iraqi troops had suffered two wounded and no deaths.
Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi said that in the past two days, 141 terrorists had been killed and 197 wounded. Five government soldiers died and three were injured, he said.
Al-Dulaimi said 11 Iraqi army battalions and three battalions of paramilitary police were participating in the offensive, along with three battalions of U.S. troops, and promised Iraqi forces would broaden the offensive against insurgents north and west of Baghdad, right up to the Syrian border.