Franco Lolan

http://home.bellsouth.net/s/editoria...er=y&ck=&ch=ne
"U.S. Punches Through Deserts in Iraq

Published: 5/10/05
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. forces punched through remote desert outposts Tuesday in pursuit of followers of Iraq's most wanted terrorist after meeting stiff resistance from militants hidden in basements, on rooftops and inside sandbag bunkers in a lawless region near the Syrian border.

At least three Marines have been killed and fewer than 20 wounded in Operation Matador, one of the biggest U.S. offensives in Iraq since militants were driven from Fallujah six months ago, the U.S. military said.

U.S. forces said as many as 100 insurgents were killed in the first 48 hours of the operation - many of them trapped under rubble as fighter jets and helicopter gunships pounded the remote desert region. But Marine commanders told The Chicago Tribune that resistance had been unexpectedly intense.

Meanwhile, Italy's foreign minister suggested Tuesday that Italian troops would remain in Iraq until at least early next year despite renewed domestic pressures for withdrawal after the killing of an Italian intelligence agent by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi had previously said Italy would remove an initial 300 soldiers from its 3,000-strong contingent beginning in September, but he stressed a full pullout would depend on security conditions and consultation with the U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi officials.

Gunmen kidnapped the provincial governor Tuesday and told his family he would be released when U.S. forces withdraw from Qaim, the town 200 miles west of Baghdad where the offensive began late Saturday.

U.S. forces believe the main body of insurgents in Iraq have moved from their former strongholds in Fallujah and Ramadi to points north and west, Marine Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday. They appear to be well-equipped and trained.

"There are reports that these people are in uniforms, in some cases are wearing protective vests, and there's some suspicion that their training exceeds what we have seen with other engagements further east," he said.

U.S. soldiers built a pontoon bridge across the Euphrates River to push into the northern Jazirah Desert, believed to be a haven for followers of militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Intelligence reports indicated insurgents were using the vast region, a known smuggling route, as a staging area where foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria received weapons and equipment for attacks in the key cities of Baghdad, Ramadi, Fallujah and Mosul, U.S. Marine spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool said.

But as Marines prepared to cross the river Sunday, they started taking mortar fire from the nearby town of Obeidi, 185 miles west of Baghdad, according to a Chicago Tribune reporter embedded with the assault.

When U.S. forces moved into the town, they found insurgents were prepared for a fight. Sandbag bunkers were piled in front of some homes, and fighters were positioned on rooftops and balconies, according to a Los Angeles Times reporter also embedded with the troops. The insurgents used boats to ferry weapons across the river.

At one point, the paper said, a Marine walked into a house and a fighter hiding in the basement fired through a floor grate, killing him. Another Marine suffered shrapnel wounds when an insurgent threw a grenade through the window of a house where he was retrieving a wounded comrade, the Los Angeles Times said.

On Monday night, insurgents attacked a Marine convoy near a U.S. base in Qaim with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and two suicide car bombers, Pool said. One explosion damaged a Humvee, and a suicide car bomber was destroyed by a U.S. Marine tank, but no Marines were killed and 10 insurgents surrendered in the incident, Pool said in a statement Tuesday.

Navy and Marine F/A-18 Hornet strike jets strafed the tree line, as Marine Cobra attack helicopters fired rockets into insurgent hideouts, the Chicago Tribune reporter said.

By Monday afternoon, Marines had pushed across the bridge onto the northern banks of the Euphrates, Pool said. On Tuesday, they moved through sparsely populated settlements along a 12-mile stretch to the border, meeting only light resistance, according to the Tribune reporter.

Residents reached by telephone in the area reported some fighting Tuesday in Obeidi and the two nearby towns of Rommana and Karabilah. But they said frightened residents were taking advantage of the relative lull to flee the Qaim area.

Adel Izzedine left the town on foot with his wife and three children, walking 6 miles through agricultural fields to reach a nearby village where the family caught a taxi for the remaining 43 miles to Rawa.

"There are gunmen in the city, but there are also a lot of innocent civilians," said Izzedine, who was looking for a mosque or a school in which to spend the night. "We are living the same misery that Fallujah lived some time ago."

Syria has said it is arresting would-be infiltrators and doing what it can to control the porous border with Iraq.

Gov. Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was seized as he drove from Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi on Tuesday morning, his brother, Hammad, told The Associated Press.

The kidnappers later telephoned the family and said he would only be released when U.S. forces pull out of the Syrian border town, Hammad Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi said.

Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, said: "We don't respond to insurgent or terrorist demands."

A Japanese man working for an international security firm disappeared in the same region after his convoy was ambushed near Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad.

A Sunni militant group claimed on its Web site Monday that it had kidnapped Akihiko Saito, 44. But Japan's defense chief, Yoshinori Ono, said the attack would not affect the country's deployment of 550 troops on a humanitarian mission in southern Iraq. The victim's family supported that pledge Tuesday.

The U.S. offensive comes amid a surge of militant attacks across Iraq, targeting the U.S, military, Iraqi security forces and civilians, since the country's first democratically elected government was announced April 28.

Three U.S. Marines were killed in central Iraq on Monday, one by a homemade bomb in Nasser Wa Salaam, 25 miles west of Baghdad, and two others by indirect fire in Karmah, 50 miles west of the capital, the military said. At least 1,606 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

On Tuesday, at least two car bombs exploded in downtown Baghdad, targeting U.S. and Iraqi troops. At least nine Iraqis were killed and 19 wounded in the two attacks, the Interior Ministry said. One attack also wounded three American soldiers, said U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Kelly Lewis.

Also Tuesday, Iraq's parliament appointed a 55-member committee of legislators from the country's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish groups to draw up the country's new constitution. Political leaders spent the first three months after landmark Jan. 30 elections trying to form a government and now have until Aug. 15 to complete their main task, drafting a constitution which must then be approved in a national referendum."

Any information or pictures on the fighting?

troung

Insurgents Fight Back in Western Iraq
Battle Rages for Third Day Near Syrian Border
By ANTONIO CASTANEDA, AP
BAGHDAD, Iraq (May 10) - U.S. forces punched through remote desert outposts Tuesday in pursuit of followers of Iraq's most wanted terrorist after meeting stiff resistance from militants hidden in basements, on rooftops and inside sandbag bunkers in a lawless region near the Syrian border.

At least three Marines have been killed and fewer than 20 wounded in Operation Matador, one of the biggest U.S. offensives in Iraq since militants were driven from Fallujah six months ago, the U.S. military said.

U.S. forces said as many as 100 insurgents were killed in the first 48 hours of the operation - many of them trapped under rubble as fighter jets and helicopter gunships pounded the remote desert region. But Marine commanders told The Chicago Tribune that resistance had been unexpectedly intense.

Meanwhile, Italy's foreign minister suggested Tuesday that Italian troops would remain in Iraq until at least early next year despite renewed domestic pressures for withdrawal after the killing of an Italian intelligence agent by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi had previously said Italy would remove an initial 300 soldiers from its 3,000-strong contingent beginning in September, but he stressed a full pullout would depend on security conditions and consultation with the U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi officials.

Gunmen kidnapped the provincial governor Tuesday and told his family he would be released when U.S. forces withdraw from Qaim, the town 200 miles west of Baghdad where the offensive began late Saturday.

U.S. forces believe the main body of insurgents in Iraq have moved from their former strongholds in Fallujah and Ramadi to points north and west, Marine Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday. They appear to be well-equipped and trained.

"There are reports that these people are in uniforms, in some cases are wearing protective vests, and there's some suspicion that their training exceeds what we have seen with other engagements further east," he said.

U.S. soldiers built a pontoon bridge across the Euphrates River to push into the northern Jazirah Desert, believed to be a haven for followers of militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Intelligence reports indicated insurgents were using the vast region, a known smuggling route, as a staging area where foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria received weapons and equipment for attacks in the key cities of Baghdad, Ramadi, Fallujah and Mosul, U.S. Marine spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool said.

But as Marines prepared to cross the river Sunday, they started taking mortar fire from the nearby town of Obeidi, 185 miles west of Baghdad, according to a Chicago Tribune reporter embedded with the assault.

When U.S. forces moved into the town, they found insurgents were prepared for a fight. Sandbag bunkers were piled in front of some homes, and fighters were positioned on rooftops and balconies, according to a Los Angeles Times reporter also embedded with the troops. The insurgents used boats to ferry weapons across the river.

At one point, the paper said, a Marine walked into a house and a fighter hiding in the basement fired through a floor grate, killing him. Another Marine suffered shrapnel wounds when an insurgent threw a grenade through the window of a house where he was retrieving a wounded comrade, the Los Angeles Times said.

On Monday night, insurgents attacked a Marine convoy near a U.S. base in Qaim with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and two suicide car bombers, Pool said. One explosion damaged a Humvee, and a suicide car bomber was destroyed by a U.S. Marine tank, but no Marines were killed and 10 insurgents surrendered in the incident, Pool said in a statement Tuesday.

Navy and Marine F/A-18 Hornet strike jets strafed the tree line, as Marine Cobra attack helicopters fired rockets into insurgent hideouts, the Chicago Tribune reporter said.

By Monday afternoon, Marines had pushed across the bridge onto the northern banks of the Euphrates, Pool said. On Tuesday, they moved through sparsely populated settlements along a 12-mile stretch to the border, meeting only light resistance, according to the Tribune reporter.

Residents reached by telephone in the area reported some fighting Tuesday in Obeidi and the two nearby towns of Rommana and Karabilah. But they said frightened residents were taking advantage of the relative lull to flee the Qaim area.

Adel Izzedine left the town on foot with his wife and three children, walking 6 miles through agricultural fields to reach a nearby village where the family caught a taxi for the remaining 43 miles to Rawa.

"There are gunmen in the city, but there are also a lot of innocent civilians," said Izzedine, who was looking for a mosque or a school in which to spend the night. "We are living the same misery that Fallujah lived some time ago."

Syria has said it is arresting would-be infiltrators and doing what it can to control the porous border with Iraq.

Gov. Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was seized as he drove from Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi on Tuesday morning, his brother, Hammad, told The Associated Press.

The kidnappers later telephoned the family and said he would only be released when U.S. forces pull out of the Syrian border town, Hammad Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi said.

Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, said: "We don't respond to insurgent or terrorist demands."

A Japanese man working for an international security firm disappeared in the same region after his convoy was ambushed near Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad.

A Sunni militant group claimed on its Web site Monday that it had kidnapped Akihiko Saito, 44. But Japan's defense chief, Yoshinori Ono, said the attack would not affect the country's deployment of 550 troops on a humanitarian mission in southern Iraq. The victim's family supported that pledge Tuesday.

The U.S. offensive comes amid a surge of militant attacks across Iraq, targeting the U.S, military, Iraqi security forces and civilians, since the country's first democratically elected government was announced April 28.

Three U.S. Marines were killed in central Iraq on Monday, one by a homemade bomb in Nasser Wa Salaam, 25 miles west of Baghdad, and two others by indirect fire in Karmah, 50 miles west of the capital, the military said. At least 1,606 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

On Tuesday, at least two car bombs exploded in downtown Baghdad, targeting U.S. and Iraqi troops. At least nine Iraqis were killed and 19 wounded in the two attacks, the Interior Ministry said. One attack also wounded three American soldiers, said U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Kelly Lewis.

Also Tuesday, Iraq's parliament appointed a 55-member committee of legislators from the country's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish groups to draw up the country's new constitution. Political leaders spent the first three months after landmark Jan. 30 elections trying to form a government and now have until Aug. 15 to complete their main task, drafting a constitution which must then be approved in a national referendum.

Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue and Qassim Abdul-Zahara contributed to this report in Baghdad.

Confed999

Find 'em and kill 'em. These terrorists deserve no less...

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry