US Marines using 'old school' tactics in Iraq
By Peter Graff

Karabila - A Marine puts a chunk of C-4 plastic explosive up against the lock of a gate and shouts out: "Fire in the hole!"

The gate is blasted off its hinges and four men charge in.

Door by door, house by house, the United States Marines are clearing the border town of Karabila in Operation Spear, their latest campaign to target suspected foreign fighters hiding out in the dusty towns of western Iraq's Euphrates river valley.

'They're destabilising a country that's trying to get on its feet'
Washington says the fighters - responsible for a campaign of suicide bombings across the country that has worsened in the last two months - enter mainly from Syria near where the river flows into Iraq through vast empty desert.

Supporting intelligence that foreigners are operating in the area, soldiers on Sunday discovered nine foreign passports, including ones from Algeria, Sudan, Libya and Saudi Arabia.

The strategy for battling the infiltrators is ferocious.

The locals in this town have virtually all fled, many through Marine checkpoints under white flags, others out into the desert where their tents can be seen from the town.

They've taken their belongings. Inside houses are few signs of life: a child's shoe, a small bicycle, a soccer ball.

'That's not fair to the Iraqis'
A few insurgents have held out in the town, and the Marines respond with overwhelming force; opening fire with the massive guns on their tanks, summoning air strikes from F-16s, Tornado jets and Cobra attack helicopters.

Whole sections of the town are destroyed. Some buildings have been flattened. Then, the methodical searches ensure that not a gate goes unforced, whether kicked in, blasted off with a shotgun, blown off with C-4 or knocked down by a tank.

"This is old school, door-to-door fighting," says Captain Chris Toland, commander of Lima company of the 3rd battalion 25th regiment.

In front of the house his company occupied is the foot and leg of an insurgent who attacked them from the mosque next door. After the marines shot him, they discovered grenades on the body so they blew it up where it lay, scattering limbs.

On Sunday, the Marines of Lima Company came upon the bodies of two more heavily-armed insurgents killed in the fighting. Nearby houses lay in rubble.

There are successes that the troops say justify the devastation. Four Iraqi hostages were released on Saturday from a holding house next door to a car bomb factory.

And as well as the foreign passports, a platoon of Iraqi soldiers attached to the US company discovered a cache of weapons and ammunition.

Tucked inside a Libyan passport was a Libyan Arab Airways ticket and boarding pass, showing the bearer had flown to the Syrian capital Damascus from Tripoli less than three weeks ago.

To the Marines patrolling the deserted streets of Karabila, it is proof that the foreign fighters are still coming, faster than the Americans can root them out.

Company commander Toland blames Syria for failing to keep them out.

"They're destabilising a country that's trying to get on its feet. That's not fair to the Iraqis," he says.

Sagbam Gareeb, commander of the Iraqi platoon that discovered the weapons and passports, says the foreigners "just want one thing".

"They don't want Iraq to be stable."

Ellie