snipowsky
11-15-04, 12:04 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
November 15, 2004
Fallujah, Iraq - After nearly a week of fighting, the 3rd battalion, 5th Marines finally stumbled into Michigan on Sunday evening.
Michigan is the nickname the U.S. military has given to the main highway that bisects what is left of Fallujah. It marks the southernmost boundary of a rectangular area about 2 miles by 1 1/2 miles that this Marine unit was assigned to secure.
For political reasons, part of the force attacking the city drove from the north and swept south as quickly as possible. The assault on Fallujah has angered the country's Sunni Muslims, and the interim Iraqi government wants to declare victory here as quickly as possible.
But while the center of the American line pushed rapidly south, this Marine unit concentrated on three neighborhoods in the northwest and north-central parts of the city that were believed to be an insurgent stronghold. The Marines were given the nightmarish task of going from building to building to root out insurgents, disarm booby traps and find weapons caches.
When the exhausted unit finally made it to Michigan at 4 p.m. Sunday, the smell of success was a mixture of cordite and rotting bodies.
After the grind of gunbattles, aerial assaults and tank and artillery fire, the city resembles a Hollywood set. In the morning, it is turned on for battle, and at night, the streets, choked with rubble and dotted with decaying corpses, are eerily silent.
In some areas of the city, corpses lie on the street every 50 yards, rotting in the 85-degree heat.
U.S. Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski on Sunday put the toll of guerrillas killed in Fallujah at more than 1,200. There was no estimate of civilian casualties. A U.S. military statement said 38 U.S. troops had been killed and 275 wounded in the assault.
While this Marine unit has completed its objective, the city is still not secure. A battalion operations officer estimated that it will be at least two more days before the entire city can be considered under government control.
Military intelligence had said insurgents set up their headquarters somewhere in the three neighborhoods --- the Jolan, the souk and the park --- where the Marines were attacking. The only way to find them and flush them out was to search every building. Moving at a rate of about 600 yards every five hours, Marines had to work their way through the warren of streets.
In the Jolan district, the homes along the one-lane, dirt streets usually have a cinderblock or concrete wall that fronts the street. Between the wall and the house is a courtyard where the rebels would either rig booby traps or lie in wait to ambush the Marines. In effect, searching every home amounted to assaulting a bunker.
In many cases, before Marines entered an area, the homes would be attacked by artillery or planes dropping 500-pound bombs.
Next, a gunner with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on a Humvee would begin his work. It takes about two minutes for a machine gun to either blow a hole in the wall or demolish the gate. With the courtyard exposed, the Marines would rush the building.
A typical street has about 20 houses, and the searches, punctuated with gunbattles, would begin at dawn and continue for 12 hours. At night, the soldiers would usually get five or six hours' sleep.
Sometimes, these assaults would go horribly awry. Three Marines were killed when, after entering a building, insurgents detonated explosives on the roof, sending the building crashing down. Some setbacks
Just hours before the Marines secured their area Sunday, a platoon ran into insurgents in a building a block south of Michigan. In that assault, a soldier was first shot then wounded by a grenade. His leg later had to be amputated.
American firepower also entombed civilians who hid in their homes during the fighting.
The 3rd Platoon of the 3/5 Kilo Company rescued an Iraqi woman Sunday who was buried under the rubble of her house, hit by U.S. bombs five days ago. Although the woman was bleeding and suffered second-degree burns over 30 percent of her body, Marine doctors said she was in stable condition.
She told the Marines that her husband and two sons had died under the rubble.
While medics were waiting for a vehicle to evacuate her, three of her neighbors rushed out to cheer the U.S. troops. The oldest of the three men, a 51-year-old shopkeeper who did not want to be identified, told the Marines he had been detained Tuesday by a roving group of gunmen who, when they heard him talking on his cellphone and accused him of collaborating with the Americans. The man said he was trying to contact relatives to tell them he was still alive.
The man, who said he stayed in Fallujah because he was afraid of looters, said the gunmen took him to another neighborhood home where a group of 15 fighters were resting. He spent the night tied up but, when U.S. airstrikes became so severe that the houses around them shook, the gunmen fled.
"I've been so scared here. I've been scared that they would return and cut my head off," the man said.
Others were not so lucky. In one street, soldiers found three people who apparently had been executed. A man and a woman died hugging one another, each killed by a shot to the head. Nearby a blond woman, who Marines said they believed was a Westerner, had been shot and mutilated.
Two foreign women were kidnapped last month --- Margaret Hassan, 59, the director of CARE International in Iraq, and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq.
Elsewhere in Iraq:
- Militants attacked two police stations in Mosul, killing at least six Iraqi National Guards. One insurgent died. Saboteurs set fire to four oil wells in Khabbaza, 12 miles northwest of Kirkuk.
- Insurgents clashed with U.S. troops after blowing up a railroad overpass in the northern town of Beiji. At least six people were killed.
- More than a dozen insurgents attacked the Polish Embassy in Baghdad with automatic weapons, but no one was killed. After nightfall rockets or mortars struck central Baghdad, killing at least two Iraqis and a private security guard.
- Kidnappers claimed to have released two female relatives of Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, according to two pan-Arab satellite channels.
http://media.militaryphotos.net/photos/albums/fallujah_offensive/aka.jpg
November 15, 2004
Fallujah, Iraq - After nearly a week of fighting, the 3rd battalion, 5th Marines finally stumbled into Michigan on Sunday evening.
Michigan is the nickname the U.S. military has given to the main highway that bisects what is left of Fallujah. It marks the southernmost boundary of a rectangular area about 2 miles by 1 1/2 miles that this Marine unit was assigned to secure.
For political reasons, part of the force attacking the city drove from the north and swept south as quickly as possible. The assault on Fallujah has angered the country's Sunni Muslims, and the interim Iraqi government wants to declare victory here as quickly as possible.
But while the center of the American line pushed rapidly south, this Marine unit concentrated on three neighborhoods in the northwest and north-central parts of the city that were believed to be an insurgent stronghold. The Marines were given the nightmarish task of going from building to building to root out insurgents, disarm booby traps and find weapons caches.
When the exhausted unit finally made it to Michigan at 4 p.m. Sunday, the smell of success was a mixture of cordite and rotting bodies.
After the grind of gunbattles, aerial assaults and tank and artillery fire, the city resembles a Hollywood set. In the morning, it is turned on for battle, and at night, the streets, choked with rubble and dotted with decaying corpses, are eerily silent.
In some areas of the city, corpses lie on the street every 50 yards, rotting in the 85-degree heat.
U.S. Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski on Sunday put the toll of guerrillas killed in Fallujah at more than 1,200. There was no estimate of civilian casualties. A U.S. military statement said 38 U.S. troops had been killed and 275 wounded in the assault.
While this Marine unit has completed its objective, the city is still not secure. A battalion operations officer estimated that it will be at least two more days before the entire city can be considered under government control.
Military intelligence had said insurgents set up their headquarters somewhere in the three neighborhoods --- the Jolan, the souk and the park --- where the Marines were attacking. The only way to find them and flush them out was to search every building. Moving at a rate of about 600 yards every five hours, Marines had to work their way through the warren of streets.
In the Jolan district, the homes along the one-lane, dirt streets usually have a cinderblock or concrete wall that fronts the street. Between the wall and the house is a courtyard where the rebels would either rig booby traps or lie in wait to ambush the Marines. In effect, searching every home amounted to assaulting a bunker.
In many cases, before Marines entered an area, the homes would be attacked by artillery or planes dropping 500-pound bombs.
Next, a gunner with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on a Humvee would begin his work. It takes about two minutes for a machine gun to either blow a hole in the wall or demolish the gate. With the courtyard exposed, the Marines would rush the building.
A typical street has about 20 houses, and the searches, punctuated with gunbattles, would begin at dawn and continue for 12 hours. At night, the soldiers would usually get five or six hours' sleep.
Sometimes, these assaults would go horribly awry. Three Marines were killed when, after entering a building, insurgents detonated explosives on the roof, sending the building crashing down. Some setbacks
Just hours before the Marines secured their area Sunday, a platoon ran into insurgents in a building a block south of Michigan. In that assault, a soldier was first shot then wounded by a grenade. His leg later had to be amputated.
American firepower also entombed civilians who hid in their homes during the fighting.
The 3rd Platoon of the 3/5 Kilo Company rescued an Iraqi woman Sunday who was buried under the rubble of her house, hit by U.S. bombs five days ago. Although the woman was bleeding and suffered second-degree burns over 30 percent of her body, Marine doctors said she was in stable condition.
She told the Marines that her husband and two sons had died under the rubble.
While medics were waiting for a vehicle to evacuate her, three of her neighbors rushed out to cheer the U.S. troops. The oldest of the three men, a 51-year-old shopkeeper who did not want to be identified, told the Marines he had been detained Tuesday by a roving group of gunmen who, when they heard him talking on his cellphone and accused him of collaborating with the Americans. The man said he was trying to contact relatives to tell them he was still alive.
The man, who said he stayed in Fallujah because he was afraid of looters, said the gunmen took him to another neighborhood home where a group of 15 fighters were resting. He spent the night tied up but, when U.S. airstrikes became so severe that the houses around them shook, the gunmen fled.
"I've been so scared here. I've been scared that they would return and cut my head off," the man said.
Others were not so lucky. In one street, soldiers found three people who apparently had been executed. A man and a woman died hugging one another, each killed by a shot to the head. Nearby a blond woman, who Marines said they believed was a Westerner, had been shot and mutilated.
Two foreign women were kidnapped last month --- Margaret Hassan, 59, the director of CARE International in Iraq, and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq.
Elsewhere in Iraq:
- Militants attacked two police stations in Mosul, killing at least six Iraqi National Guards. One insurgent died. Saboteurs set fire to four oil wells in Khabbaza, 12 miles northwest of Kirkuk.
- Insurgents clashed with U.S. troops after blowing up a railroad overpass in the northern town of Beiji. At least six people were killed.
- More than a dozen insurgents attacked the Polish Embassy in Baghdad with automatic weapons, but no one was killed. After nightfall rockets or mortars struck central Baghdad, killing at least two Iraqis and a private security guard.
- Kidnappers claimed to have released two female relatives of Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, according to two pan-Arab satellite channels.
http://media.militaryphotos.net/photos/albums/fallujah_offensive/aka.jpg