US troops were questioning about 400 suspects yesterday after the biggest military operation in Iraq since the regime collapsed two months ago.
Several Iraqis are believed to have died in the three-day operation, called Peninsula Strike, north of Baghdad. One civilian source said there had been a ”number of dead”.
Last night Lieutenant General David McKiernan, the commander of ground forces in Iraq, refused to say how many Iraqis had died, but he said the mission was carried out with ”great lethality”. Four US soldiers were injured but none was killed.
An Apache AH-64 attack helicopter was shot down yesterday in western Iraq, the first helicopter to be brought down by enemy fire since the collapse of the regime. The two pilots escaped unhurt and were rescued. An F-16 fighter jet also crashed, due to what the military said was a mechanical fault, and its pilot too was uninjured.
In Operation Peninsula Strike, more than 4 000 soldiers poured into the towns of Duluiya and Balad, 72 kilometres north of Baghdad. Several river patrol boats were used, as well as low-flying AC-130 gunships in a sweeping offensive.
Of the 397 people who were arrested, 59 were later released. Several of those held were sent to a detention camp in Baghdad for questioning.
A site described by the US as a ”terrorist training camp” was also bombed by fighter jets yesterday north of Baghdad. It was unclear who had been using the camp.
”We are confident that this operation set back regime loyalists and other hardcore anti-coalition activities trying hard to disrupt our progress,” said Gen McKiernan. ”Are there bad guys still out there? Absolutely. Are we going after them? Absolutely.”
Senior generals now admit that the resistance they describe as ”bad guys” are becoming increasingly sophisticated. US soldiers on the ground have spoken of the accuracy and skill of their attackers. Most are armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as handguns and assault rifles. Some attacks appear to be coordinated with signalling flares.
While few US troops were killed in the weeks after the fall of the regime, a sudden burst of attacks in the past two weeks has claimed at least 10 lives and left more than 25 injured.
US military officials refuse to say how many attacks their troops face on a daily basis in which soldiers are neither injured nor killed, but some sources suggest that there have been more than a dozen such strikes a day in the past week. One source said there had been 26 attacks on one day. There have also been credible threats of suicide bomb attacks.
”As you fight the enemy, he adapts his techniques and tactics,” said Gen McKiernan.
He said that resistance fighters had improved their tactics because earlier techniques ”weren’t working very well”.
He said some of the US military’s opponents were ”regime loyalists”, including former Special Republican Guard and Saddam Fedayeen troops. Others were foreign fighters, and some were ”anti-western extremists”.
Paul Bremer, the US civil administrator in Iraq, said US troops were facing organised resistance. He blamed members of the Fedayeen, Ba’ath Party loyalists and officers of the Republican Guard.
Other civilian officials have warned that some militia groups are being armed and financed by supporters in Iran, particularly the Badr Brigade, the militia linked to the supreme council for Islamic revolution in Iraq.
It is widely believed that failure to capture or kill Saddam Hussein has encouraged those who try to fight against the US military. – Guardian Unlimited Â