United States forces hunting down followers of Iraq’s most wanted terrorist pushed into a lawless region north of the Euphrates River near the Syrian border on Tuesday after meeting unexpected resistance from insurgents hidden in remote desert outposts along the waterway’s southern shores.
Marines fought house-to-house on Monday against dozens of well-armed insurgents firing at them from balconies, rooftops and sandbagged bunkers in the border town of Obeidi and surrounding villages, The Los Angeles Times reported.
As many as 100 militants have been killed since Operation Matador, one of the largest American offensives in Iraq in six months, began on Saturday night in Qaim, 320km west of Baghdad, the military said.
At least three US marines have been killed in the offensive, which involves more than 1 000 marines, sailors and soldiers backed by helicopter gunships and fighter jets.
A Los Angeles Times reporter embedded with US forces said 20 American troops also were wounded, but the US military could not immediately confirm that.
Surge of attacks
The offensive comes amid a surge of militant attacks across Iraq, often targeting security forces and civilians, since the new government was announced April 28.
At least two car bombs exploded in central Baghdad on Monday, killing at least seven people and wounding 19, police said. Three American soldiers were among the injured, the US military said.
It also said three US marines were killed in central Iraq on Monday, one by a homemade bomb in Nasser Wa Salaam, 40km west of Baghdad, and two others by indirect fire in Karmah, 80km west of the capital.
US marine Captain Jeffrey Pool said soldiers built a pontoon bridge across the Euphrates River on Monday and marines have pushed into the northern Jazirah desert, a largely unpatrolled area near the Syrian border.
”This is an area which we believe has been pretty heavy with foreign insurgents from many different areas — Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine,” Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan, a spokesperson for US forces in Iraq, said late on Monday. ”That’s a fairly porous area of the border because of the terrain. It is very difficult.”
Residents in the area reported fighting Tuesday in Obeidi, 300km west of Baghdad, and the two nearby towns of Rommana and Karabilah. Speaking by telephone, they said frightened residents were fleeing the Qaim area.
”It’s truly horrific, there are snipers everywhere, rockets, no food, no electricity,” Abu Omar al-Ani, a father of three, said from Qaim on Monday night. ”Today, five rockets fell in front of my house … we are mentally exhausted.”
Pool said insurgents had tried to launch a counterattack on Monday night 7km from US Camp Gannon in Qaim.
They attacked a marine convoy with small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and two suicide car bombers, Pool said in a statement.
One bomb damaged an armoured Humvee, and a suicide car bomber was destroyed by a US marine tank, but no marines were killed and 10 insurgents surrendered, Pool said.
Surprised at resistance
Marine commanders expressed surprise at the extent of resistance on Monday in Obeidi and surrounding villages on the southern side of the Euphrates, telling the Chicago Tribune their intelligence had indicated the insurgency had massed on the other side of the waterway.
The Los Angeles Times reporter said insurgents had sandbag bunkers piled in front of some homes and fighters strategically positioned on rooftops and balconies.
In the towns of Sabah, Obeidi and Karabilah, the reporter said, insurgents fired mortar rounds at US marine convoys along the Euphrates’ southern edge.
At one point, the paper said, a marine walked into a house and an insurgent hiding in the basement fired through a floor grate, killing him. Another marine, who was retrieving a wounded comrade inside a house, suffered shrapnel wounds when an insurgent threw a grenade through a window, the Times said.
The report said insurgents were using boats to transport weapons from one side of the Euphrates River to another, and that some militants wore body armour. It said one marine suffered a broken back and at least two were wounded on Sunday when a landmine hit their tank.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighters dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs and fired 510 20mm cannon rounds on Sunday against insurgents around Qaim and that marine F/A-18 fighters fired 319 20mm cannon
rounds.
The paper quoted US Colonel Bob Chase, chief of operations for the Second Marine Division, as saying: ”The enemy honestly felt that they had a sense of security up there. It had been a safe haven, and a lot of folks up there were former Ba’athists,” referring to Saddam Hussein’s former ruling party.
”Now it is no longer a safe haven, and it will never be a safe haven again,” said Chase. He was quoted as saying insurgents have had a network of illegal ”rat lines” of men and materials moving from Syria into Iraq that had to be stopped.
Kidnapping
Meanwhile, Japan’s defence chief, Yoshinori Ono, said on Tuesday the apparent kidnapping of one of its citizens will not affect the country’s deployment of 550 troops on a humanitarian mission in southern Iraq. The victim’s family supported that pledge.
The Sunni militant Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed on its website on Monday that it had kidnapped Akihiko Saito (44) after ambushing a group of five foreign contractors protected by Iraqi forces. It said Saito was seriously injured in the fighting and the others had died.
A spokesperson for Saito’s employer, Cyprus-based security firm Hart GMSSCO, confirmed he was missing after an ambush on Sunday night involving Hart personnel.
Tuesday’s worst car bomb attack in Baghdad occurred near a cinema in al-Nasr Square, a main intersection of shops, office buildings and apartments. The interior ministry said at least seven people were killed and 16 wounded by a suicide car bomb that exploded as a US military convoy was passing.
A US military spokesperson, Captain Kelly Lewis, confirmed the car bomb attack, but said it apparently targeted an Iraqi army patrol, wounding at least 10 Iraqis, including security forces and civilians. Three American soldiers were also wounded, Lewis said, but she could not confirm whether they were part of a convoy.
About an hour later, three police officers were wounded when a car bomb exploded several kilometres to the south of al-Nasr Square in Abu Nawas, police said, an area of the capital once famous for its riverside restaurants and nightclubs. The US military confirmed the attack, but had no immediate details or casualty figures.
Also on Tuesday, Iraq’s Parliament appointed a 55-member committee of legislators from the country’s Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish groups to draw up the country’s new Constitution.
The country’s political leaders spent the first three months since landmark January 30 elections trying to form a government and now have until August 15 to complete their main task, drafting a Constitution, which must then be approved in a national referendum. — Sapa-AP