← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 18223 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2005-05-13
2005-05-13 11:42 | User Profile
[URL=http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050513/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&printer=1]Yahoo![/URL] U.S. Offensive Intensifies at Syrian Border By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer
American fighter jets flattened a suspected insurgent safe house near the Syrian border, the U.S. military said Friday, as hundreds of U.S. troops searched remote desert villages house by house for followers of Iraq's most wanted militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
American forces have met little resistance since the first two days of Operation Matador, aimed at clearing a region believed to be a haven for foreign fighters slipping over the border from Syria, the military said in a statement Friday. American intelligence indicates the insurgents are either in hiding or have fled the region, U.S. Capt. Jeffrey Pool said in the statement.
Villagers reached by telephone Friday said gunmen still roamed some areas and they continued to receive U.S. shelling.
The U.S. offensive ââ¬â one of the largest since militants were forces from Fallujah six months ago ââ¬â comes amid a surge of militant attacks that have killed more than 420 people in just over two weeks since Iraq's first democratically elected government was announced.
A car bomb exploded in a jammed commercial district of the capital Thursday, setting cars, shops and restaurants ablaze in the most deadly of a string of attacks that killed 21 and injured more than 90. Iraqis expressed growing fury at the relentless bloodshed, throwing stones at police and U.S. forces who responded to the bombing that killed 17 Iraqis and injured 81.
Two more blasts rocked the capital Friday, both targeting American patrols, Iraqi police said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, but Associated Press Television News footage of the blasts showed a U.S. Humvee, its hood open, consumed by flames on a highway leading to the airport.
A 30-minute gunbattle erupted in Ghazaliyah, a nearby part of western Baghdad, when insurgents fired on Iraqi soldiers who were searching the area, said police Maj. Abdul Karim. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Also in western Baghdad, snipers opened fire on the motorcade of the Interior Ministry's undersecretary Maj. Gen. Hikmat Moussa Hussein, killing one of his guards and wounding three, police Maj. Moussa Abdul Karim said. Hussein escaped unharmed.
North of the capital, a car bomb exploded Friday as an Iraqi army patrol was moving through Baqouba, killing three people and wounding six, police Col. Mudhafar Mohammed said. The dead included two soldiers and a civilian, he said.
At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated Thursday that the insurgency could last for many more years.
"This requires patience," he said at a news conference Thursday. "This is a thinking and adapting adversary ... I wouldn't look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from three, four years to nine years."
The U.S. military said information gained from a "senior terrorist" captured during the operation near the Syrian border led Marines to the safe house Thursday in Karabilah, a village about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad.
As Marines approached, at least four gunmen fired on them from the building, the military statement said. U.S. F-18 Super Hornet jets destroyed the building with a combination of bombs and rockets, the statement said.
The offensive was launched after U.S. intelligence showed large numbers of insurgents had moved into the northern Jazirah Desert following losses in Fallujah and Ramadi, further east. The area is believed to be a staging ground for foreign fighters, who receive weapons and equipment there to launch attacks in Iraq's main cities.
The U.S. military has confirmed five Marine deaths so far and says about 100 insurgents have been killed in the operation. But a Washington Post reporter embedded with U.S. forces put the American death toll Thursday at seven ââ¬â six of them from one squad.
Gunmen were taking over the homes of Iraqi citizens to evade Marines in the area, the U.S. military said Friday.
Residents reached by telephone in Saadah said American forces were periodically shelling their village Friday.
"The situation is very bad ... Most of the people have fled to the desert," said Samran Mukhlef Abed, a tribal leader. "The Americans are all around ... and medical services do not exist here. If someone is hurt, we have to take him to cities that are far way from here and that is impossible with the situation."
The U.S. military denied resident reports that some areas have been without electricity and running water since the offensive began late Saturday, but said regional hospital services were disrupted when a suicide car bomber attacked the hospital in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, on Saturday.
The U.S. military said it was receiving intelligence from local residents, fed up with the presence of foreign fighters in the region. But residents voiced equal frustration with U.S. forces, who pounded the area with airstrikes, artillery barrages and gunfire during the first days of the offensive
"They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We have nothing left," one man told Associated Press Television News in Qaim on Thursday. He did not give his name and hid his face with a scarf to address the camera.
Families were fleeing in trucks packed with luggage and APTN footage showed plumes of smoke rising from the town.
On the outskirts of Qaim, where the offensive began Saturday, a group of masked gunmen armed with machine guns, remained defiant Thursday.
"We will fight whoever comes, whether they are American or Arab," one of them told APTN.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have conducted stepped up raids across the country in recent weeks. Iraq's government announced Thursday the capture of two more wanted insurgents ââ¬â one a bomb maker with links to al-Zarqawi identified as Seif-Eddine Mustafa al-Naimi, the other a financier for an insurgent group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq identified as Amar Farid Abdul-Qader Ashur al-Jibouri.
Meanwhile, Australia's top Islamic leader met with clerics in Baghdad on Thursday to appeal for the release of Australian hostage, Douglas Wood. Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly told reporters he had made no contact yet with Woods' captors, but said he was ready to negotiate with anyone.
There has been no word of Wood's fate since his kidnappers' deadline for Australia to start withdrawing its forces from Iraq passed Monday. More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime
2005-05-13 12:50 | User Profile
Bush and Sharon's War is heating up to boiling levels and ready to spread itself across the Middle East and eventually World War III. The collossal death and destruction that awaits is just around the corner.
Thanks Jews!
2005-05-13 17:03 | User Profile
And yet, according to Bush, we are "winning" the war in Iraq.
As you know the Zionists have around 1,500 of the troops is Iraq and are showing the Americans how to kill innocent people.
[B]The more time that we spend in Iraq the more enemies we will make[/B], and yet that's what the Jews want.
It is the plan of the Zionists to break up Iraq into different states where they, the Jew, will be able to control the situation......they have already moved into the northern part of the country but no one is talking about it.
THEY ARE CLOSING DOWN FT. BENNING WHERE I TOOK MY BASIC TRAINNING AND WENT TO JUMP SCHOOL....... this sucks.
2005-05-13 18:06 | User Profile
[I]BUSHARON's war on Humanity keeps up.....more dead Iraqis and American soldiers...up to 29 dead US in 13 days of May. [/I]
[B][SIZE=3]'Thousands' flee fighting in Iraq[/SIZE] [/B]
Thousands of Iraqis have fled fighting between US troops and insurgents in the west of the country, aid workers say.
The head of the Iraqi Red Crescent in the country told the BBC that about 1,000 families had been displaced from the border town of Qaim.
Four hundred families had moved into schools and mosques in the town of Mashari, and there was a need for tents and water, Said Ismail Haqqi said.
US forces say they have killed about 100 rebels in the military operation.
In other violence in Iraq:
Three Iraqis, two of them soldiers, are killed in a car bomb attack in the central town of Baquba
One policeman is reportedly killed when gunmen open fire on a patrol in western Baghdad
Mortars kill three Iraqi soldiers at an army checkpoint in the southern town of Hilla, AP reports
Gunmen ambush an interior ministry official in western Baghdad, killing a guard, AP reports
A roadside bomb hits a US convoy on the road leading to the Baghdad airport.
[B]'Roaming gunmen' [/B]
American forces are carrying out a major counter-insurgency operation in the western province of Anbar.
The US military say they believe the insurgency has now shifted since the attack on its former base in Falluja last year.
Reports from the US military speak of air strikes on insurgent safe houses in remote areas and searches in desert villages.
Villagers reached by telephone by the Associated Press on Friday said insurgent gunmen still roamed some areas and they continued to come under US fire.
[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4545357.stm[/url]
2005-05-13 18:11 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Ponce]And yet, according to Bush, we are "winning" the war in Iraq.
As you know the Zionists have around 1,500 of the troops is Iraq and are showing the Americans how to kill innocent people.
[B]The more time that we spend in Iraq the more enemies we will make[/B], and yet that's what the Jews want.
It is the plan of the Zionists to break up Iraq into different states where they, the Jew, will be able to control the situation......they have already moved into the northern part of the country but no one is talking about it.
THEY ARE CLOSING DOWN FT. BENNING WHERE I TOOK MY BASIC TRAINNING AND WENT TO JUMP SCHOOL....... this sucks.[/QUOTE]
Benning isn't being closed- it's on the BRAAC due to net gains in the proposed realignment:
[url]http://images.ibsys.com/2005/0513/4485524.pdf[/url]
2005-05-13 18:24 | User Profile
Things are definitely not calming down over there. Did anyone else notice the deadly anti-US riots a few days ago in the Puppet Mayorality of Kabul, aka Peaceful Democratic Free Afghanistan?
2005-05-13 18:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]Things are definitely not calming down over there. Did anyone else notice the deadly anti-US riots a few days ago in the Puppet Mayorality of Kabul, aka Peaceful Democratic Free Afghanistan?[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I've been following that.
Islamic unrest has just spread to [URL=http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18222]Uzbekistan[/URL] as well.