Iraqi insurgents took the war to the United States-led coalition on Saturday, launching a devastating series of attacks across the centre of the country, even as American forces massed for an assault on the rebel-held city of Fallujah.
At least 20 US Marines were injured by a car bomb in the city of Ramadi after fierce clashes overnight. Firefights also raged along the northern outskirts of Falluja as American planes bombed targets nearby, witnesses said.
The worst of Saturday’s violence was in Samarra, north of Baghdad, where 34 people, mainly from the new Iraqi security forces, died in a series of car bomb and mortar attacks against police stations and Iraqi National Guard positions. Insurgents also attacked in Baghdad, where a suicide car bomb on the road to the airport wounded three American soldiers, and in Baquba, east of the capital, where gunmen opened fire on two trucks carrying prisoners in an area northeast of Baghdad, killing one policeman and injuring four.
The British troops recently deployed in the desert southeast of Fallujah are also expected to be hit soon. Last week three soldiers from the Black Watch regiment, were killed in a suicide attack. American intelligence have warned that the militants aim to influence British public opinion by inflicting massive casualties, possibly with a series of suicide car bombs.
Intercepted communications between militant groups have revealed an increasingly sophisticated understanding of politics in Western Europe and the United States. US sources said that key words like ”Black Watch” are now featuring heavily in intercepted communications traffic between militants, indicating an intention to attack the Scottish regiment. ”Part of the reason is simply tactical. They [the Black Watch] are across key supply lines which the anti-Iraqi forces need. But another aim is to put pressure on the British government,” one source in Washington said. ”Militants are not stupid. They are well aware that many in the UK are against the war.”
Black Watch soldiers conducted a series of raids against suspected terror masterminds on Saturday. Troops equipped with night vision gear aided by US air support searched several homes thought to contain local insurgent leaders and stockpiles of weaponry but found little. In Falluja, residents said the overnight bombardment had reduced a small Saudi-funded hospital to rubble.
Only its facade, with a sign reading Nazzal Emergency Hospital, remained intact. Photographs from Reuters newsagency showed blue surgical cloths and empty medicine boxes amid the ruins. A nearby compound used by the main Fallujah hospital to store medical supplies was also destroyed, witnesses said. Hospital staff said ambulances had been unable to go out as the city shook to explosions.
Most of the city’s 300 000 people have already fled. Many streamed out of the city to the north west on the only road left open by US forces on Saturday. ”I left the city two days ago, but my heart is still there,” said Abu Mohammed. ”We are living in terror.”
Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, has warned that an attack on Fallujah could undermine the crucial elections in Iraq, to be held in January, by alienating significant numbers of Iraqis. His comments drew a chilly response from Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister of Iraq, and British politicians.
”I don’t know what pressure he has to bear on the insurgents. If he can stop the insurgents from inflicting damage and killing Iraqis, then he is welcome,” Allawi said.
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said that Annan was ”entirely wrong” to oppose an assault on Fallujah.
”Dithering and an unwillingness to act and a fear of consequences often lead to the very opposite of what those who are worried want for themselves and for others,” Blunkett said. ”If the elections are to take place, if they are to be adjudged to be democratic and if there is to be security and stability and a democratic Iraq in the future then the terrorists have to be rooted out, both for the Iraqis and for the rest of us.”
However Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary, said that British soldiers would be in great danger once the assault on Fallujah.
”My anxiety has always been that, by freeing up American troops to take part in an assault on Fallujah, we were associating British troops with tactics of overwhelming firepower that will increase the resentment at our presence and make life more dangerous for British troops in any part of Iraq,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited Â