The United States military launched a major offensive early on Tuesday in a cluster of cities in the Euphrates River valley aimed at insurgents who were using the area as a safe haven and who had killed 20 marines there in August.
It was the second US offensive launched against al-Qaeda in Iraq militants in the Anbar region of western Iraq in four days, both coming less than two weeks before a national referendum on the country’s new Constitution.
Airstrikes by US warplanes and dozens of helicopters set off explosions that lit the city skylines of Haqlaniyah, Parwana and Haditha before dawn on Tuesday.
Barrages of gunfire also were seen in the night sky. Large sections of Haqlaniyah’s power were knocked out.
About 2 500 marines, soldiers and sailors, and several hundred Iraqi troops, were taking part in the operation, the US military said.
On Saturday, about 1 000 service members launched a separate US offensive further to the west in the Euphrates River valley near the Syrian border in the village of Sadah and two nearby towns: Rumana and Karabila.
That ”Iron Fist” offensive, which continued on Tuesday, is against al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgents who receive reinforcements and supplies from inside Syria. At least 57 insurgents have been killed, with no serious casualties among US forces, the military said. Soldiers with air support were conducting house-to-house searches for militants.
No information was immediately available on casualties in Tuesday’s ”River Gate” offensive by US forces on Haqlaniyah, Parwana and Haditha. All three cities have no Iraqi police or troops based in them, leaving their streets open to roving insurgent groups.
The cities, with a combined population of about 80 000, are located 150km east of the Sadah village offensive and 275km northwest of Baghdad.
Earlier this year, Haqlaniyah, Parwana and Haditha were all searched individually by hundreds of US forces, but Tuesday’s offensive was substantially larger than any previous operations by US forces in that entire region of western Iraq in 2005.
On August 1, an ambush by insurgents in Haditha killed six US marine snipers, and a large roadside bomb on the outskirts of the city on August 3 killed 14 marines and an Iraqi interpreter.
The US military also has said that Iraq’s most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, once had a home in Haditha.
Commanders in the ”River Gate” offensive said it was designed to uproot insurgents who were taking advantage of the lack of Iraqi police and soldiers in the three cities.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq and other groups in the Sunni-led insurgency have launched a wave of violence across the country in an effort to wreck the October 15 constitutional referendum.
On Monday, the United Nations announced in New York that it is distributing millions of copies of Iraq’s draft Constitution in this country ahead of the referendum. But residents in Baghdad and several other provinces told The Associated Press on Tuesday that they have not received the document or seen it being handed out in their areas.
Meanwhile, Sunni Arab leaders continued to criticise the Shiite-dominated Parliament for passing a new ruling last weekend that could make it much more difficult for the Sunni minority to defeat the draft Constitution that they oppose.
The Parliament decision on Sunday was the latest instance of the Shi’ite-dominated government making a favourable interpretation of rules on the Constitution.
Those rules state that the Constitution is defeated if two-thirds of voters in any three of Iraq’s 18 provinces reject it, even if an overall majority across the country approve.
Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority has been counting on those rules to defeat the charter at the polls. There are four provinces where Sunni Arabs could conceivably make the two-thirds majority ”no” vote. But instead, Parliament, which has only 16 Sunni members, approved an interpretation stating that two-thirds of registered voters — rather than two-thirds of all those who cast ballots — must reject the Constitution for the rules to apply.
The change effectively raises the bar to reach the two-thirds mark.
Sunni Arab leaders fear the Constitution will fragment Iraq, allowing Shi’ites in the south and Kurds in the north to form mini-states.
At least 212 people, including 17 US forces, have been killed in the last nine days in Iraq during attacks and fighting involving insurgents.
The latest victims included Iraqi police Major Sahib Zaman who was shot and killed during an attack by suspected insurgents on his home Kirkuk late on Monday, and three civilians who died in fighting between insurgents and Iraqi police in Baghdad that night, authorities said.
A US soldier also died of gunshot wounds suffered in western Iraq, the military announced on Tuesday. The 56th Brigade combat team soldier was shot on Monday morning near Taqaddum, a town close to the city of Fallujah and about 65km west of Baghdad.
The attack raised to at least 1 937 the number of US military members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.
Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum narrowly survived a roadside bomb that hit his convoy in Baghdad on Monday, killing three of his bodyguards.
Afterward, Bahr al-Uloum vowed that the insurgents would fail and that Iraqis will approve the new Constitution.
”All Iraqis are looking forward to saying ‘yes’ to the Constitution… By doing so Iraq will usher in a new stage,” he said. – Sapa-AP