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thedrifter
04-06-04, 05:09 PM
Fiercest Iraq fighting since fall of Hussein
By Hamza Hendawi
The Associated Press

NAJAF, Iraq - Iraqi insurgents and rebellious Shiites challenged the U.S.-led occupation force on two fronts today, mounting a string of attacks across the south and fighting pitched battles against Marines in the turbulent city of Fallujah.

Sixty-four Iraqis and two coalition soldiers - including an American - died in the violence today, bringing the three-day total to 18 Americans and 134 Iraqis killed in the worst fighting since the war that toppled Saddam Hussein.

On the Fallujah front, Marines drove into the center of the Sunni city in heavy fighting before pulling back before nightfall.

The assault had been promised after the brutal killings and mutilations of four American civilians there last week. Hospital officials said eight Iraqis died today and 20 were wounded, including women and children.

U.S. warplanes firing rockets destroyed four houses in Fallujah late today, witnesses said. A doctor said 26 Iraqis, including women and children, were killed and 30 wounded in the strike. The rockets destroyed the houses in two neighborhoods in the city after nightfall, the witnesses said.

The dusty, Euphrates River city 35 miles west of Baghdad is a stronghold of the anti-U.S. insurgency that sprang up shortly after Saddam's ouster a year ago.

U.S. authorities also launched a crackdown on radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia after a series of weekend uprisings in Baghdad and cities and towns to the south that took a heavy toll in both American and Iraqi lives.

The fighting marks the first major outbreak of violence between the U.S.-led occupation force and the Shiites since Baghdad fell a year ago. The 30-year-old al-Sadr, however, does not have a large following among majority Shiites - many see him as a renegade, too young and too headstrong to lead wisely.

With fighting intensifying ahead of the June 30 handover of power to an Iraqi government, Secretary of Defense Donald H.

Rumsfeld said American commanders in Iraq would get additional troops if needed. None has asked so far, he said.

State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said al-Sadr and his followers were not representative of a religious cause but of "political gangsterism."

"They're not acting in the name of religion, they're acting in the name of arrogating for themselves political power and influence through violence, because they can't get it through peaceful persuasion," he said.

In the latest U.S. deaths, five Marines were killed Monday - one in Fallujah and the others on the western outskirts of Baghdad - and five U.S. soldiers were killed in attacks in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Mosul on Monday and today. Eight Americans were killed in Sadr City on Sunday. At least 614 American troops have died in Iraq since the war began.

Marines waged a fierce battle for hours today with gunmen holed up in a residential neighborhood of Fallujah. The military used a deadly AC-130 gunship to lay down a barrage of fire against guerrillas, and commanders said Marines were holding an area several blocks deep inside the city. At least two Marines were wounded.

The crackdown on al-Sadr, who has drawn backing from young and impoverished Shiites with rousing sermons demanding a U.S.

withdrawal, sent his black-garbed militiamen against coalition troops Sunday, Monday and today.

Fighting in the southern cities of Nasiriyah, Kut, Karbala and Amarah and in a northern Baghdad neighborhood killed 30 Iraqis, coalition military officials said. This evening, gunfire was heard in another part of Baghdad, Sadr City, where fierce battles occurred Sunday, residents said.

Fearing a U.S. move to arrest him, al-Sadr on today left a fortress-like mosque in the city of Kufa, south of Baghdad, where he had been holed up for days, his aides said.

Al-Sadr issued a statement saying he was ready to die to oust the Americans. He urged his followers to resist foreign forces.

"America has shown its evil intentions, and the proud Iraqi people cannot accept it. They must defend their rights by any means they see fit," the al-Sadr statement said.

"I'm prepared to have my own blood shed for what is holy to me," he said.

Al-Sadr moved to his main office in Najaf, in an alley near the city's holiest shrine, according to a top aide, Sheik Qays al-Khaz'ali. Hundreds of militiamen were protecting the office today, but there was no independent confirmation al-Sadr was there.

Perhaps more worrisome than the current fight with al-Sadr's forces is the possibility that he will start drawing support from more mainstream Shiite leaders who have largely supported the Americans until now.

The U.S.-led coalition announced a murder warrant against al-Sadr on Monday and suggested it would move to capture him soon.

U.S. officials would not explain why they were only releasing word of the warrant Monday. They said an unnamed Iraqi judge had issued it in the past months.

Still, the heavy battles over the past three days showed that even with limited backing, al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army militia is capable of a damaging fight.

The militiamen clashed with coalition troops Sunday in Baghdad and outside Najaf in fierce fighting that killed 61 people, including eight American soldiers.

In Nasiriyah on today, 15 Iraqis were killed and 35 wounded in clashes between militiamen and Italian troops, coalition spokeswoman Paola Della Casa told an Italian news agency Apcom

Eleven Italians troops were slightly wounded.

Della Casa said the Iraqi attackers used civilians as human shields, and a woman and two children were among the dead.

Fighting overnight in Amarah between al-Sadr's followers and British troops killed 15 Iraqis and wounded eight, said coalition spokesman Wun Hornbyckle.

In Kut, militiamen attacked an armored personnel carrier carrying Ukrainian soldiers, killing one and wounding five, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said. Two militiamen were killed in the fight. Ukraine has about 1,650 troops in Iraq.

U.S. Marines encircled Fallujah early Monday, and on today, they penetrated several central neighborhoods for the first time.

Mortar and rocket-propelled grenade blasts were heard, and one witness said a Humvee was ablaze.

Heavy fighting also occurred between Marines entrenched in the desert and guerrillas firing from houses on Fallujah's northeast outskirts. For hours into the night, the sides traded fire, while teams of Marines moved in and out of the neighborhood, seizing buildings to use as posts and battling gunmen. Helicopters weaved overhead, firing at guerrilla hide-outs.

"We are several blocks deep in the city of Fallujah," Marine Maj. Briandon McGolwan said. He said several helicopters were hit by small arms fire, but none were downed. He said Marines had detained 14 people since Monday.

L. Paul Bremer, the top civilian administrator in Iraq, conceded not all was going smoothly as the coalition approached the June 30 handover, a date he said was inviolable.

"We have problems, there's no hiding that. But basically Iraq is on track to realize the kind of Iraq that Iraqis want and Americans want, which is a democratic Iraq," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Also today, two South Korean aid workers were set free, a day after being detained by a Shiite group in southern Iraq, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said. The two men were doing relief work in Nasiriyah on Monday when shooting erupted between Italian forces and Shiite militiamen, said the official.


http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~11676~2066088,00.html


Ellie

thedrifter
04-07-04, 08:33 AM
Iraqis strike back - Street fighters ambush Marine advance into Fallujah

By: DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff Writer

FALLUJAH. Iraq ---- Tanks blasted buildings and American jets dropped 500-pound bombs into neighborhoods in northwest Fallujah Tuesday as Marines fought back against insurgents who launched a bold daytime ambush on a patrol just a few hundred yards from what troops had called a "safe zone."

At least two Marines were wounded in the first few minutes of fighting ---- one of them seriously with a bullet to the head. Both were from Camp Pendleton's 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment.

Marine radio reports told of dozens of insurgents killed or wounded in the fighting, which lasted well into the night.


By nightfall Tuesday, the 2:30 p.m. ambush on a patrol had drawn two companies of troops ---- about 200 men ---- into street fighting in the city that insurgents have vowed to turn into a graveyard for Americans.

The bloodshed in the city began as Marine leaders prepared to tighten the noose around Fallujah and move in for precise raids to capture or kill known insurgents and destroy weapons caches and rebel operations centers.

U.S. commanders said about 2,000 Marines and nearly as many Iraqi government troops had sealed off and surrounded the city early Monday morning, and the forces were waiting for orders to move on the city section by section.

The planned offensive was described by many Marines as "payback" for the brutal ambush of four American security contractors in Fallujah on March 31 in which townspeople burned and mutilated their bodies.

The Marines intended to choose the time and place of their assault, but the insurgents determined the time and place with their attack Tuesday afternoon. The rebel attack came just a couple hundred yards from where a Marine engineer was killed early Monday morning when troops arrived to dig in along the northern edge of the city near the Euphrates River.

Before more than 20,000 Marines replaced U.S. Army forces in the restive region west of Baghdad two weeks ago, leaders promised that the Iraqis would have "no better friend" or "no worse enemy than the Marines."

They promised to go easier than the Army had on the general population, while being relentless against the insurgents. Some called it a "velvet glove" approach.

The heavy fighting that erupted Tuesday, however, seemed to prove that the velvet glove is off for Fallujah.

It all started with a burst from a rebel machine gun that felled the first Marine.

Once he was rushed back about 800 yards to a roadblock beneath a train trestle, two tanks rolled into the city and began blasting away with their main guns ----- perhaps the most firepower used by American forces in Iraq since a series of controversial punitive operations by the Army late last year.

As the town below erupted in gunfire and rocked with explosions, one Marine sat at the edge of the train tracks high up on the trestle and wept, shocked at the sight of his buddy, who was seriously wounded and barely conscious.

But without any time to grieve or collect himself, he was called back into the battle.

He wiped his tears and joined about 30 others who loaded onto Humvees and raced to the city edge to join the tanks in the growing battle.

"Here goes, boys!" a Marine yelled as the second vehicle sped towards town.

"Let's go! We're gonna get some!" another said as a second group headed out.

Arriving at the first set of buildings in town, the Marines jumped off the vehicles and spread out on foot, heading toward intense gunfire and into a huge cloud of dust and smoke blown out by the blast of the cannon of an A-1 Abrams tank.

Within a few minutes another Marine, who had been seen joking and laughing with his anti-tank team about an hour before, was shot in the leg as he fired a 50-caliber machine gun from atop a Humvee, witnesses said.

The fighting intensified throughout the afternoon. The number of insurgent fighters and the size of attacks surprised the troops.

Military leaders have insisted that Fallujah's insurgents amounted to "a few bad apples," and that removing them would end the strife in the city and allow the Marines to begin reconstruction projects and help rebuild the local economy and infrastructure.

Just a few minutes before the fighting started Tuesday, First Lt. Wade Zirkle described troubles in Fallujah as caused by "just a few in town," and he said it would be the Marines' job to "separate the good from the bad."

But during the fighting Marine leaders reported from the city that they were encountering groups of as many as 40 to 50 fighters in a single block. What's more, they reported fighting spread out over more than a square mile of the city.

By sunset Marines had called in air strikes, helicopters had strafed insurgent positions and troops had fired mortars into the city. A second company of Marines in armored amphibious assault vehicles rolled into Fallujah behind three more tanks.

In the last few minutes of light, just before mortars crashed about 1,000 yards from where the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment commander was directing the fight, a Marine radioed on the main frequency that a curfew was to be enforced after 7 p.m.

"If they're out there, they're up to no good and I want them dropped," the voice said.

Most of the fighting had stopped by 8 p.m., and the Marines regrouped somewhere in the city, preparing for what promised to be a long night.

"This is a lot more combat than last year, said Marine mortarman Lance Cpl. Nickolas Bogert, who fought during the invasion of Iraq last year along with the majority of men in the 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment.

At about 5 p.m. he directed his mortar team to fire high explosive rounds into Fallujah after troops in the city observed 40 or 50 fighters "looking ready for war."

"It's a whole different mentality this time," he said as Marines fanned out around him to look for snipers on surrounding rooftops. "You don't really know what's out there."

Staff writer Darrin Mortenson and staff photographer Hayne Palmour are reporting from Iraq with Camp Pendleton Marines. Their coverage is collected at www.nctimes.com/military/iraq.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/04/07/military/iraq/0_0_5_0412_10_16.txt


Ellie

thedrifter
04-07-04, 08:35 AM
Marines react with anger

By: KEN MA - Staff Writer

OCEANSIDE ---- Local Marines reacted to a bloody day of fighting in Iraq on Tuesday with anger and resolve.

Young Camp Pendleton-based Marines walking around downtown Oceanside on a chilly spring night showed faces of sadness and determination after they learned about the deaths of up to a dozen Marines in Iraq.

"Its upsets me to see my brothers fall and die," Pfc. Luis Flores said. "It makes me angry. You feel sorry for the families."


His friend, Lance Cpl. Cory Longridge, said he was not shocked by Tuesday's violence, adding that hostilities have been on the rise since he fought in Iraq last year.

"I'm tired of Americans getting killed," Longridge said. "That stuff was going on when I was there."

Both Marines said the recent violence has motivated them to go back to Iraq, where they hope to root out the insurgents and help the Iraqi people. The Marines said they believe that most Iraqis are friendly people who are happy to have the Americans there, and that the insurgents are in the minority.

"I think they (Iraqis) are scared," said Flores, who will find out where his new tour of duty will be this summer. "They really want us there, but they are afraid to show it."

Another Marine, Pfc. Scott Barner, said he believes that members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force who are in Fallujah are probably scared and angry.

"The guy that went said 'it's hell 10 times over,' " Barner said of a friend who was recently deployed with other Camp Pendleton Marines.

Barner, who said he may be deployed to Iraq in September, said he was not afraid of going because Marines are trained for such situations.

Flores said the violence has strengthened his resolve to fight in the war.

"I think we went to war for a good cause," he said. "I think of it as saving people."

Contact staff writer Ken Ma at (760) 761-4408 or kma@nctimes.com.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/04/07/military/21_19_024_6_04.txt


Ellie