 |
SwiftVets.com
Service to Country
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
JB Stone
Guest
|
 Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 1:31 am Post subject: |
 |
|
| Quote: | U.S. Launches Second Phase in Fallujah
ABC News ^ | 11/11/04 | Jim Krane, Tini Tran, Sameer N. Yacoub, Mariam Fam, Sabah Jerges, Katarina Kratovac, Maggie Michael.
U.S. Forces Launch Attack Into Southern Fallujah; Military Estimates 600 Insurgents Killed
FALLUJAH, Iraq Nov 11, 2004 — U.S. forces backed by an air and artillery barrage launched a major attack Thursday into the southern half of Fallujah, trying to choke Sunni fighters in a shrinking cordon. The military estimated 600 insurgents have been killed in the offensive but said success in the city won't break Iraq's insurgency.
The Fallujah campaign has also sent a stream of American wounded to the military's main hospital in Europe. Planes carrying just over 100 bloodied and broken troops were arriving Thursday at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, a day after 64 others were brought in.
The large number of wounded sent to Germany suggests that fighting may be more intense, at least in some areas, than the military had initially indicated.
Violence escalated dramatically in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul amid a campaign by guerrillas this week to step up attacks elsewhere to divert troops from Fallujah.
Guerrillas attacked police stations in Mosul, overwhelming several, and U.S. and Iraqi troops were trying to put them down, the military said. The city governor was looking to neighboring provinces for police reinforcements, as gunfire and explosions echoed across the city.
In Baghdad, a car bomb ripped through a crowded commercial street, killing 17 people, police said the second deadly car bomb in the capital in as many days.
Since Monday, U.S. and Iraqi troops have been fighting their way through the northern half of Fallujah, reaching the east-west highway that bisects the city and battling pockets of fighters trapped in the north while other insurgents fell back into the south.
After air and artillery barrages pummeled the southern districts through the day, U.S. soldiers and Marines after sunset launched their main assault across the central highway into the southern half, the military said.
Sunni fighters in the city appear to be trying desperately to break open an escape route through the U.S.-Iraqi cordon closing off the city's southern edge, commanders said. Insurgent mortar fire and attacks have focused on bridges and roads out of the city more than on U.S. troops descending from the north, they said.
Commanders say that since the offensive began, their seal around the city is tight and that fighters still inside have little chance of escape. Some 15,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops are involved in the cordon and the assault inside the city.
At least 13 U.S. soldiers and Marines have been killed so far in the Fallujah operation.
Military officials cautioned that the figure of 600 insurgents killed in Fallujah was only a rough estimate. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said Thursday that "hundreds and hundreds of insurgents" have been killed and captured.
Commanders had said before the offensive began that 1,200 to 3,000 fighters were believed holed up in the city. But the speed of the U.S. advance has led some officers on the ground to conclude that many guerrillas abandoned the city before the attack so they could fight elsewhere.
The number of civilian casualties in the city is not known. Most of the city's 200,000-300,000 residents are thought to have fled before the offensive. The rest have been hunkered down in their homes without electricity during days of heavy barrages, with food supplies reported low.
Gen. Myers, speaking on NBC's "Today" show, called the offensive "very, very successful."
But he acknowledged that guerrillas will move their fight elsewhere. "If anybody thinks that Fallujah is going to be the end of the insurgency in Iraq, that was never the objective, never our intention, and even never our hope."
"There has always been pockets of resistance in this type of fighting, just like there was in World War II we would claim an island is secure and fight them for months after that," Marine Capt. John Griffin said in Fallujah. "Claiming the city is secure doesn't actually mean that all the resistance is gone, it just means that we have secured the area and have control."
In the past 24 hours of fighting, three Americans were killed and another 17 wounded in Fallujah, commanders said. The military on Tuesday put the total American toll in the operation at 10.
Two Marine Super Cobra attack helicopters were hit by ground fire and forced to land in separate incidents near Fallujah, the military said Thursday. The crews were not injured and were rescued.
In the northern half of Fallujah, an Iraqi commander reported the discovery of "hostage slaughterhouses" in which foreign captives had been killed. Documents of hostages were found, along with CDs showing beheadings and the black clothes of kidnappers, he said.
U.S. troops also discovered an Iraqi man chained to a wall in a building in northeastern Fallujah, the military said Thursday. The man, who was shackled at the ankles and wrists, bruised and starving, told Marines he was a taxi driver abducted 10 days ago and that his captors had beat him with cables.
In what could be a sign of progress, the Marines began turning over the northern neighborhood of Jolan to Iraqi forces, signaling that they consider the area relatively secure. Jolan, a dense, historic district of tight alleyways, was considered one of the strongest insurgent positions.
The assault into southern Fallujah follows a day of sometimes fierce firefights as troops tried to clear bands of gunmen in the north.
In one of the most dramatic clashes Wednesday, snipers fired on U.S. and Iraqi troops from the minarets of the Khulafah al-Rashid mosque, the military said. U.S. Marines called in an airstrike, and an F-18 dropped a 500-pound bomb on the mosque, destroying both minarets. Insurgents in streets around the mosque kept up the fight, pinning troops down on a rooftop.
U.S. troops skirmished Wednesday night in the Wihdah and Muhandiseen neighborhoods, according to Iraqi journalist Abdul Qader Saadi, who said he saw burnt armored vehicles and tanks and bodies in the streets.
Meanwhile, rebels have continued heavy attacks elsewhere in a campaign of violence meant to divert troops from Fallujah and show they can keep up the fight even if their strongest bastion falls.
The Baghdad car bomb exploded moments after a U.S. patrol passed on Saadoun Street, and the blast ripped bystanders on the avenue, near major hotels housing foreigners. Huge plumes of black smoke rose in the air as a dozen mangled cars burned, and people pulled bodies and bloodied survivors from the rubble.
A car bomb a day earlier killed 10 people in Baghdad, among a total 28 killed in violence outside Fallujah on Wednesday.
In Mosul, residents said masked gunmen were roaming the streets, setting police cars ablaze and holding some of the city's bridges despite a government announcement a day earlier that Iraqi forces would seal the bridges and enforce a curfew in the city, one of Iraq's largest.
Guerrillas overwhelmed several police stations, prompting "offensive operations" by U.S. and Iraqi troops in response, the U.S. military said. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Militants kidnapped three relatives of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, and a militant group on Wednesday threatened to behead the three in 48 hours unless the Fallujah siege is halted. Militants also claimed to have abducted 20 Iraqi National Guard troops in Fallujah. |
Sunni fighters in the city appear to be trying desperately to break open an escape route through the U.S.-Iraqi cordon closing off the city's southern edge, commanders said. Insurgent mortar fire and attacks have focused on bridges and roads out of the city more than on U.S. troops descending from the north, they said.
| Quote: | 
At least 13 U.S. soldiers and Marines have been killed so far in the Fallujah operation.
|
| Quote: | 
Two Marine Super Cobra attack helicopters were hit by ground fire and forced to land in separate incidents near Fallujah, the military said Thursday. The crews were not injured and were rescued.
|
Iraqi Gov't Warns Media About Coverage
Thursday November 11, 2004 11:01 PM
AP Photo NY181
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The Iraqi government warned news organizations Thursday to distinguish between insurgents and ordinary civilians in coverage of the fighting in Fallujah and to promote the leadership's position or face unspecified action.
The warning came in a statement sent to news organizations by Iraq's Media High Commission, which cited the 60-day state of emergency declared Sunday on the eve of the offensive in Fallujah.
``You must be precise and objective in handling news and information,'' the statement said.
It stressed the necessity of differentiating between ``innocent citizens of Fallujah who are not targeted by the military operations and between the terrorist groups who infiltrated the city and took its people hostage under the pretext of resistance and jihad.''
It also told news organizations to tell their correspondents ``to be credible and precise'' and not to ``add patriotic descriptions to groups of killers and criminals.''
Finally, the commission told news organizations to provide space to explain ``the government position, expressing the ambition of most of the Iraqi people'' and underscore that ``these military operations did not come about until all peaceful means were attempted'' to avoid violence.
It said that failure to follow the instructions will require authorities to ``take all necessary measures to safeguard the supreme interest of the homeland.'' The statement did not provide further details.
It also told news organizations to tell their correspondents ``to be credible and precise'' and not to ``add patriotic descriptions to groups of killers and criminals.''
| Quote: | Mosul may be the next Fallujah, officials fear
With war already raging in Fallujah in central Iraq, officials worry that the relatively peaceful north is on the brink of explosion, with fighting already flaring in the city of Mosul.
This assessment comes as the 4,000 soldiers of a Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigade face an increasingly violent uprising in the northern Iraq city, where insurgents in recent days have launched attacks with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and bombs.
"The Mosul governor has invoked immediate curfew and all bridges are closed," U.S. Army Lt Col. Paul Hastings said.
Security and intelligence officials of the pro-U.S. Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq say they have concluded that Mosul, an ethnically diverse city of 2.5 million near the Syrian and Turkish borders, may be the next battlefield in the war between insurgents fighting the U.S.-led occupation force and Iraqi interim government.
"We are very worried about Mosul," said Kosrat Rasool Ali, a ranking leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls the eastern half of the autonomous Kurdish region. "The same terrorists who are in Fallujah are coming to Mosul. They are reorganizing themselves, they are coordinating with the other groups."
U.S. military officials have suggested that the lighter-than-expected military resistance against their Fallujah assault may mean that many of the insurgents had filtered out of the city to other population centers.
"Mosul is a big threat," said a high-level Kurdish security official in Irbil, about 50 miles west of Mosul, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It is going to be the second Fallujah, but even worse."
The action spiked this week, as insurgents faced with a U.S. assault on Fallujah, launched their own attacks in Mosul, as well as Baghdad and other cities farther to the south.
Yesterday in Mosul, firefights broke out between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces, prompting the curfew and bridge closures.
The soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division arrived in Iraq only within the past two months, replacing another Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigade that had completed its tour of duty.
They are part of Task Force Olympia, which is working with Iraq forces to try to improve security in Mosul.
Despite the efforts, the security situation in Mosul has been eroding in recent weeks, with Mosul suffering a surge in suicide and roadside bombings.
Two convoys and a police station were targeted in yesterday's attacks. Fighting then spread to other areas, with Reuters reporting that residents stayed inside as grenade blasts shook the city while U.S. helicopters flew overhead.
The casualties included two U.S. soldiers killed Monday, when mortar attacks hit their base. One of those soldiers was identified yesterday as Master Sgt. Steven Auchman, who worked with the 5th Air Support Operation in support of the Fort Lewis Stryker Brigade. He was scheduled to return from Iraq in January.
The casualties yesterday also included a foreign contractor who died in a Mosul convoy attack, according to U.S. Capt. Angela Bowman. Three Iraqi policemen and an Iraqi National Guard soldier also were killed, hospital and security officials said.
Mosul — unlike the ethnically and religiously homogenous cities of the Sunni triangle, such as Samarra, Fallujah and Ramadi — contains a mix of populations. The city has a significant Christian minority and large groups of Kurds and Turkomans, with ties to Turkey, as well as the Sunni Arabs who populate the ranks of the anti-U.S. insurgency.
After falling into chaos immediately after the U.S.-led invasion last year, Mosul became a relatively peaceful city under the control of Maj. Gen. David Petreaus and the U.S. Army's 20,000-strong 101st Airborne Division.
The city is now controlled by the leaner Task Force Olympia. It has some 8,500 soldiers, including the Stryker brigade that patrols in a new generation of eight-wheeled armored vehicles.
But some Iraqis say tensions in the city are being ratcheted up by the interim government and U.S. forces. Talaat al-Wazaan, leader of a Mosul-based nationalist Iraqi party, said the violence in the city was a direct result of provocations by the U.S.-led forces.
"What's happening in Mosul is that the government is making the city into a red area like they made Fallujah," he said. "What Mosul has is high patriotic feeling. We can't keep quiet about what the occupation forces are doing to provoke Mosul."
Task Force Olympia soldiers in recent weeks have worked with Iraqi police, National Guard and soldiers to target terrorists whose attacks have killed many innocent civilians, according to press statements.
Kurdish officials say Mosul has been a magnet for insurgents seeping into the country from Syria.
Attacks on the city's Christians and Kurds have increased. Officials in Baghdad have received reports that Islamic enforcers have run rampant throughout the city, ordering non-Muslim women to wear scarves at the university, said Tahir Khalaf al-Bakaa, Iraq's minister of higher education.
"This is becoming a big problem in Mosul," he said. "We are walking on minefields."
Kurdish officials say that between 100 and 250 Kurdish members of Ansar al-Islam, a violent Islamic group holed up in the Kurdish mountains until the war last year, have infiltrated the once-prosperous oil center.
Recruitment mistakes early in the occupation have riddled the security forces in Mosul with insurgents, said Dana Ahmad Majid, regional director of Asayesh, Sulaymaniyah province's security and intelligence service, which claims to have planted sources in insurgent strongholds such as Fallujah and Baquba.
Compiled from Newhouse News Service, Reuters and The Associated Press reports. |
US holds most of Fallujah as fight goes on
By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff | November 11, 2004
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- US forces have seized control of up to 70 percent of this rebel stronghold, US and Iraqi officials said yesterday, as American and Iraqi troops battled insurgents along the city's main street and confronted isolated pockets of gunmen who had slipped back behind US lines.
But in a sign that the invasion of Fallujah would not be a magic bullet to end terrorist attacks, violence raged across the country. At least 18 people were killed in attacks in northern Iraq -- including at least two US soldiers in a mortar attack in Mosul. A car bombing aimed at a Baghdad police patrol killed at least 10 Iraqis and wounded 15 others.
Meanwhile, armed men kidnapped three relatives of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi -- a cousin, the cousin's wife, and their daughter-in-law -- from their home in Baghdad. A group calling itself Anar al-Jihad threatened to behead them in 48 hours unless the Fallujah siege is lifted.
The insurgent attacks, which have increased since the Fallujah operation began three days ago, raised the prospect that a sizable number of militants had fled Fallujah and are regrouping to mount assaults elsewhere in places like Mosul. Such a flight would help explain the relative swiftness of the joint US-Iraqi military operation so far.
In Fallujah, a Globe reporter accompanying an Army armored unit saw half a dozen US tanks straddling the main thoroughfare, their heavy guns thundering as they fired into buildings after coming to the aid of Iraqi forces who were under attack from a band of 15 to 20 insurgents.
The scene, which unfolded in sight of a mosque that had been a rallying point for insurgents, starkly illustrated the sudden power shift in the city. The four-lane Highway 10 was until recently a bustling commercial street where insurgents manned checkpoints; where markets sold videos of hostage beheadings. In March a mob dragged four US contractors from their cars, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. Two of the bodies were hung from a bridge, sparking the first abortive Marine assault on the city.
Yesterday, the road was deserted except for military vehicles, and the insurgents could do little but harass the US forces with occasional shots from a sniper on a nearby rooftop.
Still, there were signs that it will not be easy to fully capture the city and hand it over to Iraqi forces -- a step crucial to win and retain the good will of residents suspicious of an outside force -- without allowing insurgents to slip back. In several areas around the city, Iraqi troops left alone to guard seized buildings called for US help within hours after coming under renewed attack.
Making the assault on Fallujah a long-term success ''is really going to be up to the Iraqis," said Captain Paul Fowler, commander of a tank company in the Army's First Infantry Division that took part in the battle. ''They have to stand up and do what's expected of them. It also depends on the good people who live here using appropriate authorities, police, and national guard, and not allowing the insurgents to come in and take over like they did before."
The Iraqi government took steps yesterday to show it was taking control of the city and to hold up the insurgents to the public as criminals rather than holy warriors. US and Iraqi forces took over City Hall in a predawn battle, fighting off insurgents armed with antiarmor rockets. Iraqi troops raised an Iraqi flag in an important symbolic location; the power balance tipped in favor of insurgents last spring when they took over the mayor's office and police station.
ADVERTISEMENT
Marines continued to battle pockets of resistance in the Jolan district, where foreign fighters were believed to be strongest, but controlled most of the area, the military said. Marines called in airstrikes on a mosque after taking fire from inside. The military said it used four precision-guided missiles and destroyed the minaret.
In the eastern section of the city, troops from the First Infantry Division reached the industrial district south of the main road where car-bomb factories were believed to be housed. North of the road, heavy fighting erupted near a school that had been a suspected insurgent meeting place.
''We're just sweeping up the trash," Fowler said.
Major General Abdul Qader Mohammed Jassem Mohan, commander of Iraqi forces in Fallujah, told reporters that his troops had found hostage ''slaughterhouses" in Fallujah used by kidnappers. He said they found black clothing like that worn by hostage takers in videos of beheadings, along with hundreds of CDs including records of the names of hostages.
Perhaps the toughest job ahead in Fallujah is installing Iraqi security forces more effective than the police and national guard forces that were gradually undermined and finally routed in April. The Iraqi Intervention Forces, which US troops said performed far better than the Iraqi National Guard they usually work with, still needed constant shoring up.
On Tuesday, the Iraqi forces took a key objective, the Al-Janabi Hospital, believed to be an insurgent planning center -- but only after US tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles pounded the hospital and surrounding buildings. But yesterday, an estimated 15 insurgents crept back into a row of buildings across from the hospital and opened fire; the Iraqis could not hold them off and soon US tanks were rolling in to help.
The same happened with a school the Iraqis were supposed to hold in the northeast part of the city. In some cases, Iraqi forces were not properly overseeing their troops in the field. At a First Infantry Division battalion aid station, medics were caring for three patients, all from the Iraqi forces. One was severely dehydrated and reported that he had not eaten or drunk anything in a day.
A US medic took an Iraqi officer to task. ''Our medics will risk their lives to help your men in the field, but he hasn't eaten and that isn't right," the medic said. ''You have access to food and water, right? Well, then if he turns down food and water, his officers have to make him eat."
Lieutenant General John F. Sattler, commander of Marine forces in Iraq, said that of up to 5,000 insurgents once believed to be in Fallujah, there are now only ''small pockets, blind, moving throughout the city." US and Iraqi officials said that many had fled to other parts of the country.
At least 10 US troops had been killed and 25 wounded by midday yesterday, the military said, and the official tally of insurgents killed stood at 71. Four Iraqi soldiers have been killed and 16 injured.
In Fallujah, a Globe reporter accompanying an Army armored unit saw half a dozen US tanks straddling the main thoroughfare, their heavy guns thundering as they fired into buildings after coming to the aid of Iraqi forces who were under attack from a band of 15 to 20 insurgents.
The scene, which unfolded in sight of a mosque that had been a rallying point for insurgents, starkly illustrated the sudden power shift in the city. The four-lane Highway 10 was until recently a bustling commercial street where insurgents manned checkpoints; where markets sold videos of hostage beheadings. In March a mob dragged four US contractors from their cars, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. Two of the bodies were hung from a bridge
| Quote: | THE 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood an' stone;
'E don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own;
'E keeps 'is side-arms awful: 'e leaves 'em all about,
An' then comes up the Regiment an' pokes the 'eathen out.
All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess
All along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less
All along of abby-nay, kul an' hazar-ho,
Mind you keep your rifle an' yourself jus' so!
Rudyard Kipling |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
JB Stone
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 2:40 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
HOUSE TO HOUSE: Corp. Christiopher DeBlanc of Spottsylvania, Va., tails up a staircase as marines of the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance company search residences in Fallujah for insurgents. Marines prepared for a counterattack by rebels Thursday night. |
New rebel tactics emerge in Fallujah
Marines faced a tough fight Thursday as insurgents began a counterattack timed with an Islamic holy night.
By SCOTT PETERSON | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
FALLUJAH, IRAQ – After three days of measurable progress, American forces trying to take full control of Fallujah are confronting an insurgent force that has renewed energy.
And as American and Iraqi forces spread their grip across the city, the constant skirmishes of close urban combat and burst-in searches door-to-door are revealing more about insurgent tactics, including sleeper cells.
Thursday night, forces braced for a significant counteroffensive by Iraqi insurgents - an effort coinciding with the "Night of Power," an annual Islamic holy day marked by intense spiritual devotion, which is said to cleanse sins and determine destiny.
Loudspeakers from at least one mosque began what US Marine officers said was a "revving up" of militants by chants that resembled the "martyr's last rites."
"We expect an increase of suicide attacks, by cars, motorcycles, and people wearing explosive vests," said Lt. Col. Michael Ramos, commander of the 1st Battalion 3rd Marines, from Dallas.
"It's going to get a lot worse tonight," Capt. Gil Juarez, commander of the Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) company told his platoon chiefs, as marines loaded their vehicles at dusk with extra ammunition.
"I think there's going to be a big fight tonight, so get your heads ready to get back in the game," said Captain Juarez, from San Diego, Calif. "These [insurgents] are pushing the offensive right now. We've got to get ready."
Despite a day of steady US tank and artillery fire that rumbled across Fallujah like a thunderstorm ready to pour, insurgents began their work.
One armored unit was ambushed in the south center of the city by militants who struck with rocket-propelled grenades. Separately, another vehicle was hit with gunfire, wounding a marine.
Those involved in the ambush said a trap had been laid, and that the area was marked with earth berms in defensive posture, and metal-box firing positions. Shortly after the firefight, US-fired artillery rounds crashed into the area.
"They have been working on it, an L-shaped ambush," said one corporal, whose face was blackened by smoke from the attack. "It looks like something out of Mad Maxx."
"We walked right into a hornet's nest today," said a sergeant with the worn look of a survivor. Their names and units involved could not be released, in line with military rules that prevent such details until the wounded's next of kin have been notified. "They were probing us and fired six RPGs before we went for it. They lassoed us right in."
As American and Iraqi forces have spread their grip across Fallujah, the constant skirmishes of close urban combat and burst-in, door-to-door searches are revealing more and more about insurgent tactics.
In the course of locating seven weapons caches in a single block around a mosque in northeast Fallujah, an Iraqi platoon Wednesday found a suitcase full of vials labeled "Sarin," a deadly nerve agent.
While further analysis determined that the find was probably part of a Soviet test kit with samples, its discovery in a room with mortar shells appeared to indicate an intent to weaponize the material.
On the eve of the US-Iraqi assault on Fallujah, insurgent leaders in the city promised a massive counterattack.
Until late Thursday, resistance in Fallujah had been piecemeal, with individual rocket, mortar, and rifle teams making surprise attacks. US heavy artillery, tank guns, and airstrikes have waged steady barrages, paving the way for marine infantry advances.
US military leaders have deemed the effort in Fallujah so far as a success. In three days of fighting, coalition units have swept across more than half the city, sustaining relatively few casualties.
But Thursday night, casualties appeared to mount. Coalition forces have been targeted from mosques. They have uncovered unarmed sleeper cells that they believe have been seeded throughout the city and primed to strike after the initial assault.
Insurgents continued a wave of violence elsewhere. A car bomb ripped through a crowded Baghdad commercial street, killing 17 people, police said. In the north, guerrillas overwhelmed several police stations in Mosul and battled US troops.
Mosques were used by militants when marines first attempted to invade the city last April. They were sometimes targeted by US forces, adding to the international outcry that grew at the time about civilian casualties.
This time, Iraqi nationalists and Islamic militants loyal to the network of Al Qaeda affiliate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may have been depending on mosques as staging areas, US officers say.
"Almost every single mosque we've come through has been used for weapons storage and insurgent military training," says Lt. Col. Ramos.
Marines have shot at the speakers of minarets, which are normally used for the Muslim call to prayer, though in recent days they've served as a literal call to arms.
Before the assault began, US intelligence officers warned of unarmed Iraqis wearing dishdashas (traditional long gowns worn by men) moving to US lines and reporting back to guerrilla cells.
Instead, marines have found that small groups of unarmed men, claiming to have stayed behind to prevent looting of their house, may in fact be sleeper cells, waiting for orders to link up with prepositioned weapons and attack.
One example Wednesday was a group of four men, found in their house by the LAR Raider Platoon during a search. They said they had recently been caught by the mujahideen, or holy warriors of the resistance, and been tortured.
Later that day and several blocks away, Raider Scouts searching other buildings found four more men. They also said they stayed behind to guards their houses, and that they had been tortured.
But further questioning found that there were no signs of torture - militants in Fallujah typically kill suspected traitors - and that the men's claimed identities did not hold up to investigation.
"It was well rehearsed," said Lt. Michael Aubry from Arlington Heights, Ill. "The first time didn't look suspicious, but the second time ... it did."
"There are sleeper cells all over the place," says Juarez. "They are either going to start coming out of their holes and attack us, or [they] will leave."
| Quote: | This is a transcript from AM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 08:00 on ABC Local Radio.
AM - Friday, 12 November , 2004 08:16:00
Reporter: Rafael Epstein
TONY EASTLEY: US Forces launched an air and artillery barrage on the southern half of the Iraqi city, trying to herd Sunni insurgents into a shrinking cordon.
Diyar Omary is a journalist with the Dubai based al-Arabiya network. Unlike Western correspondents he's not travelling with the US Army. He says he's seen three American tanks and one helicopter stopped by insurgents, one section of the city has been flattened and many of the insurgents have told him they want to die fighting as martyrs.
He also told AM's Rafael Epstein many of the insurgents have fled to the northern town of Mosul, where several police stations have been attacked and overrun.
DIYAR OMARY: Well, the fighting has still dragged on, and the insurgents are still paying a great resistance. They hit� you know, they hit and they run to the other district and they divided themselves into two groups, (inaudible), as they call it in Islam extremist Shahada, they remain in Fallujah.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: So, you're saying there that there are some people there who want to fight so that they can be killed?
DIYAR OMARY: Yeah, they divided themselves into two groups and they fled the Fallujah, parts of them, they fled Fallujah.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: How heavy has the fighting been overnight?
DIYAR OMARY: Overnight, there will be sporadic fighting. I think the Americans have the superiority in the night, and they have been fighting very well. Most of the American advances have been at night. What I saw is three of the American tanks being set on fire has been by the RPG.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: You saw three American tanks on fire, did you?
DIYAR OMARY: Yeah. I see, yeah, three tanks have been hit by the RPG-7. The streets of Fallujah are so narrow. I mean, it is very easy to target or to hit American tanks. And I see one helicopter's been shot down by the insurgents. I didn't see it come down, but I seen some of the wreckage of the helicopter.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Because you're not travelling with the US Army, or any army, how difficult are you finding it to move around Fallujah?
DIYAR OMARY: I think it is very difficult to move around Fallujah. There's the snipers, the American snipers, they are controlling the roofs of Fallujah, so I think at the end the Americans will control the city, the fighters and the insurgents, they will run out of ammunition in the end.
TONY EASTLEY: Diyar Omary, a journalist in Fallujah working for the Dubai-based al-Arabiya network, speaking with AM's Rafael Epstein. |
U.S. military intelligence officers comb through Fallujah 'hostage slaughterhouse'
Save a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.comSave a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.com Email a link to this articleEmail a link to this article Printer-friendly version of this articlePrinter-friendly version of this article View a list of the most popular articles on our siteView a list of the most popular articles on our site
By Jim Krane
ASSOCIATED PRESS
2:38 p.m. November 11, 2004
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq – U.S. and Iraqi troops battling their way through Fallujah stumbled on a horrific find – a small, windowless room with blood-soaked mattresses and straw mats on the floor that U.S. commanders are calling a "hostage slaughterhouse."
The room is in a small, concrete house is believed to have been used by militants who captured and possibly killed hostages here.
Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, who is commanding the offensive to retake the insurgent-held city, gave grim details of the "slaughterhouse" Thursday after paying a visit there.
"The room was small. There were no windows, just one door. Inside, the flag was on the wall. There were two thin mattresses and straw mats covered in blood," he said. "There was also a wheelchair, which we believe was used to move the prisoners around in. We believe they were bound and moved around the complex in the wheelchair."
Hanging on the wall of the small room was a black banner reading, "The Islamic Secret Army" with a logo showing a sword and a Kalashnikov rifle flanking a Quran.
That militant group has claimed responsibility in a number of kidnapping of foreigners – including the July abduction of seven employees – three Indians, three Kenyans, and an Egyptian – working for a Kuwaiti company operating in Iraq.
The group warned the company to stop its activities in Iraq. The hostages were later released after ransom was paid.
U.S. and Iraqi forces seized the abandoned concrete home in a small courtyard in the city's northern Jolan district on Wednesday.
Shortly afterward, Iraqi commander Maj. Gen. Abdul Qader Mohammed Jassem Mohan, announced some of the findings: hostages' documents, CDs showing captives being killed and black clothing worn by militants in videos.
Natonski said U.S. troops also found a computer, computer disks, and a large arms cache in the home, which included a living space and a kitchen.
"We are now currently exploiting the material that was found in the room to see and confirm whether this was in fact a room used for execution by the insurgents of innocent Iraqis and foreigners," he said.
He did not give any details on the identities of the hostages thought to have been kept there.
Marine intelligence officers are combing through the computer disks and other finds from the site, hoping to glean information on insurgents.
In another building, troops discovered an Iraqi man chained to a wall, the military said Thursday. The man, who was shackled at the ankles and wrists, bruised and starving, told Marines he was a taxi driver abducted 10 days earlier and that his captors beat him with cables.
Also, a Fox News reporter embedded with India Company of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment said the unit found five bodies in a locked house in northwest Fallujah on Wednesday. All the victims were shot in the back of the head. Their identities were not known, although there were indications they were civilians, the report said.
At least 10 foreigners are still in kidnappers' hands in Iraq, including British aid worker Margaret Hassan, French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot and an unidentified American worker for a Saudi company.
On Thursday, Al-Jazeera television aired a videotape showing what the station said was an American contractor of Lebanese origin held hostage in Iraq. The balding, middle-aged man, who carried a U.S. passport and an identification card in the name of Dean Sadek, was shown sitting in front of a green wall.
It was unclear when Sadek or where was kidnapped. Last week, the Interior Ministry said a Lebanese-American was seized by armed men from his home in the city's Mansour district but gave the name as Radim Sadeq. It could not be determined if he was the same person shown Thursday.
| Quote: | Fallujah Battle Intensifies as Helicopters Are Downed (Update3)
Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Fighting escalated in the Iraqi city of Fallujah as two U.S. helicopters were downed and American and Iraqi troops battled house-to-house in the town center for control of the insurgent stronghold.
``Fighting has intensified from yesterday,'' U.S. Marine Major Francis Piccoli said by telephone from outside Fallujah. ``We're coming upon the enemy in fixed positions, and we're using controlled violence to kill or capture them.''
Four helicopter crewmen were rescued unhurt in the Sunni Muslim-dominated city after one chopper was downed by ground fire and another made a forced landing for unknown reasons, Piccoli said. There was no word on recovery of the aircraft.
The fighting marked the fourth day of a joint effort to take the western Iraqi city, which the U.S. says has been a haven for foreign fighters and remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime dedicated to derailing national elections scheduled for January.
Eighteen American soldiers and five Iraqi troops have been killed since fighting began, the U.S. military said in a statement e-mailed from Baghdad. Some 178 U.S. soldiers and 34 Iraqi troops have been wounded, figures that were accurate as of 8 p.m. local time.
An unidentified military official estimated 600 insurgents had been killed, the Associated Press reported. General Richard Myers, the Pentagon's top general, said on a CBS broadcast that ``there have been hundreds and hundreds of insurgents who have be either killed or captured.'' About 15,000 American and Iraqi troops are fighting an estimated 3,000 insurgents in Fallujah, the military has said.
Baghdad, Mosul Violence
Elsewhere, a car bomb exploded in northern Baghdad at 11:15 a.m., wounding 30 civilians and destroying 11 vehicles, the U.S. military said in a statement e-mailed from the capital city. A nearby building collapsed, trapping an unknown number of Iraqis inside, the statement said. The Associated Press reported that a car bombing in Baghdad killed at least 17 people.
A series of attacks on Iraqi security forces in the northern city of Mosul prompted the U.S. Army and Iraqi National Guard to begin ``offensive operations'' there, the U.S. military said in an e-mailed statement.
Troops searching house-to-house in Fallujah discovered an Iraqi hostage who had apparently been left by fleeing fighters, Piccoli said. Television footage on Fox News showed an unidentified man who bore numerous bruises and cuts.
Firing From Mosque
U.S. forces also found explosives and weapons caches in empty houses, and uncovered mortars and other ammunition inside the Khilafa al-Rashid mosque, Piccoli said. Insurgents had fired yesterday from the building's minaret, Piccoli said, forcing the U.S. to call in air support and Iraq to send forces into the building.
``We have no desire to enter mosques, but our units will take action if mosques are used as base to launch attacks,'' Piccoli said.
Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said ``things are going as planned'' and that 70 percent of Fallujah was under control during an interview on the CBS ``Early Show.''
``We hope that in the next few days we'll be able to return Fallujah to the citizens there without the intimidation that the insurgents brought.'' Myers said.
Bush at Arlington
U.S. President George W. Bush marked Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, offering praise for soldiers in Fallujah.
``Some of tomorrow's veterans are in combat in Iraq at this hour,'' Bush said. ``They have a clear mission to defeat the terrorists and aid the rise of a free government that can defend itself. They are performing that mission with skill and with honor.''
The U.S. and Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's administration have repeatedly said Fallujah harbors terrorists tied to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose group has claimed responsibility for attacks across Iraq and for the beheading of foreign hostages from the U.S., the U.K. and Japan.
Allawi on Nov. 8 authorized the military operation, named ``Dawn'' in Arabic, in order to bring Fallujah under government control before the legislative elections set for January
Iraqi and U.S. forces controlled the mayor's office and the main east-west road as of yesterday, forcing insurgents to retreat, the military said.
Allawi declared a state of emergency in most of Iraq on Nov. 7, imposing curfews in Baghdad, Fallujah and nearby Ramadi, and closing roads, borders and the capital's international airport.
|
U.S. Forces Attack Militants in Fallujah
By EDWARD HARRIS
FALLUJAH, Iraq - Insurgents tried to break through the U.S. cordon surrounding Fallujah on Thursday as American forces launched an offensive against concentrations of militants in the south of the city. Some 600 insurgents, 18 U.S. troops and five Iraqi soldiers have been killed in the four-day assault, the U.S. military said.
U.S. troops, meanwhile, went on the offensive Thursday in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, after guerrilla attacks launched against police stations and bridges across the Tigris river in an apparent bid to relieve pressure on their trapped allies in Fallujah.
A U.S. official acknowledged it might take "some time" to secure the city, 220 miles to the north.
Elsewhere, a series of attacks throughout central Iraq underscored the nation's perilous security. In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded Thursday moments after a U.S. patrol passed on Saadoun Street, killing 17 bystanders and wounding 30. There were no U.S. casualties.
Another car bomb exploded in Kirkuk as the governor's convoy was passing by, killing a bystander and wounding 14 people. Three Iraqis were killed in a shootout between U.S. troops and insurgents in Samarra. Two car bombs injured eight people in Hillah.
Al-Jazeera television aired a videotape showing what the station said was an American contractor of Lebanese origin held hostage in Iraq. The balding, middle-aged man, who carried a U.S. passport and an identification card in the name of Dean Sadek, was shown sitting in front of a green wall. Al-Jazeera did not air any audio but quoted Sadek as saying all businesses should stop cooperating with U.S. authorities.
The four-day Fallujah offensive has wounded an additional 178 Americans along with 34 Iraqi soldiers, the military said.
As night fell, U.S. Army soldiers and Marines attacked south of the main east-west highway that bisects Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim insurgent stronghold 40 miles west of Baghdad.
Many, if not most, of Fallujah's 200,000 to 300,000 residents fled the city before the assault. It is impossible to determine how many civilians who were not actively fighting the Americans or assisting the insurgents may have been killed.
Commanders said 1,200 to 3,000 fighters were believed in Fallujah before the offensive.
Most of the insurgents still fighting in Fallujah are believed to have fallen back to southern districts ahead of the advancing U.S. and Iraqi forces, although fierce clashes were reported in the west of the city around the public market.
American officers said the majority of the insurgent mortar and machine-gun fire Thursday was directed at U.S. military units forming a cordon around the city to prevent guerrillas from slipping away.
Officers said that suggested the insurgents were trying to break out of Fallujah rather than defend it.
Meanwhile, two Marine Super Cobra attack helicopters were hit by ground fire and forced to land in separate incidents near Fallujah, the military said. The four pilots were rescued, though one suffered slight injuries.
At a U.S. camp outside Fallujah, Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division, said the operation was running "ahead of schedule" but he would not predict how many days of fighting lay ahead.
He said troops had found an arms cache in "almost every single mosque in Fallujah."
Natonski also said he had visited a "slaughterhouse" in the northern Jolan neighborhood where hostages were held and possibly killed by militants. He described a small room with no windows and just one door. He said he saw two thin mattresses, straw mats covered in blood and a wheelchair that apparently was used to transport captives.
Also, a Fox News reporter embedded with India Company of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment said the unit found five bodies in a locked house in northwest Fallujah on Wednesday. All the victims were shot in the back of the head. Their identities were not known, although there were indications they were civilians, the report said.
U.S. officials believe the al-Qaida-linked terror movement of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who claimed responsibility for many of the kidnappings and beheadings of foreign hostages, used Fallujah as a base. They said they believe al-Zarqawi may have slipped away before the offensive.
Last April, Fallujah militants fought Marines to a standstill during a three-week siege, which the Bush administration called off amid public criticism over civilian casualties.
The current offensive was begun so the government can hold national elections in January, although Sunni clerics have called a boycott to protest the Fallujah operation.
This offensive has gone swiftly, in part because of a larger ground force and massive use of air and artillery.
"Our air superiority is incredible," said Sgt. Michael Carmody, 26, of Thompson, Pa., with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines in northern Fallujah. "All we can do now is clear through the city and look for survivors. Air power is our best friend."
Military officials cautioned that the figure of 600 insurgents killed in Fallujah was only a rough estimate and that many died in air and artillery bombardments ahead of the ground advance.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said Thursday that "hundreds and hundreds of insurgents" have been killed and captured. He called the Fallujah offensive "very, very successful" but said it would not spell the end of the insurgency.
"If anybody thinks that Fallujah is going to be the end of the insurgency in Iraq, that was never the objective, never our intention, and even never our hope," Myers told NBC.
The attacks in Mosul may have been intended to divert attention from Fallujah.
A U.S. military spokeswoman, Capt. Angela Bowman, said it could take "some time until we fully secure the city."
Smoke rose over Mosul on Thursday as U.S. warplanes streaked overhead. City officials warned residents to stay away from the five major bridges. Militants brandishing rocket-propelled grenades were in front of the Ibn Al-Atheer hospital.
Saadi Ahmed, a senior member of the pro-American Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, said nine police stations were attacked and that "Iraqi police turned some stations over to the terrorists."
"The internal security forces...are a failure and are ineffective because some of them are cooperating with the terrorists," Ahmed said.
| Quote: | | He said troops had found an arms cache in "almost every single mosque in Fallujah." |
Text of Sarin Gas Kits Found Inteview w NPRs Anne Garrels Reply with quote
Text of Sarin Gas Kits Discovery -
click on this link and click on the "Listen" button just under the headline to hear this interview.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4164561
NPR Anchor woman:
“NPR’s Anne Garrels is in Fallujah with Bravo Co, of the 1st Marine Battalion, 3rd Regiment. She says the unit has discovered kits to test for Sarin nerve gas and she joins me now…Now the Marines first thought that they had found Sarin Gas itself.”
Anne Garrels: “That’s right. Uh, Yesterday, uh, Iraqi troops and Marines assigned to Bravo Co., uh, were searching an area in the north of the city and they found a truck full of weapons and mortars and there was also a brief case. The intelligence officer with the Marines opened up the briefcase and found, uh, four packages with ten viles and on, on the packages written in English were “Sarin-V gasses” Uh, he says he was scared, well, uh, I can’t exactly say on the radio what he said (chuckling). When he saw this, uh Captain Garcias, uh, Captain Jared Garcias was elated at first that his company had actually found WMDs proving the war was justified. They called in specialists and now it appears that these were what they call “Sarin test kits.” Apprently kits to test for Sarin gas. I mean it does raise the question as to why the insurgents would have had these kit. We can’t answer that question now.”
| Quote: | Commanders learn to respect organised hit-and-run guerrilla tactics
By Toby Harnden in Fallujah
(Filed: 12/11/2004)
Insurgents in Fallujah are highly organised and using classic tactics to mount a fierce struggle against the overwhelming might of the US military, American commanders have acknowledged.
Although US forces now theoretically control nearly three quarters of the city an overall victory leading to the long-term pacification of the city is not assured. Insurgents are using low-tech methods to combat the sophistication of American forces.
With only minimal night-vision equipment, the insurgents are choosing to fight mostly in the day. Messages are often passed by bicycle courier because mobile phones are subject to jamming or electronic monitoring and cars will be bombed.
They are using their knowledge of local geography to draw troops in and fight briefly only to retreat before precision munitions can be used.
"There are holes in the backs of buildings they're fighting in and they'll rabbit jump from building to building as we prosecute engagements," said Capt Raymond Pemberton, an intelligence officer for the US army's Task Force 2-2.
Soldiers from 2-2's Scouts platoon miraculously lived to tell the tale of these tactics after a fierce fire-fight on Wednesday evening. Sgt Jason Laser was entering a room in a complex of 20 buildings when he came face to face with a gunman.
"Through my night-vision goggles I could see he had a black beard and some kind of headdress. He opened fire with an AK-47, hitting me in the chest and knocking me completely over. The first three of us into the building were hit."
Sgt Laser's body armour saved his life, leaving only a bruise and an impression of his dog-tags on his chest. A second bullet hit his M16 rifle and sliced into his index finger. A third grazed his neck while a forth lodged in his neck protector.
The other two soldiers were also superficially wounded and the troops were forced back. At least eight insurgents melted into the night before a JDAM bomb destroyed that part of the complex.
Earlier, another insurgent has shown remarkable military skills and presence of mind. "We fired Bradley [25mm] rounds, tank rounds, incendiary grenades and everything at him and he still kept going," said Sgt. Laser.
The fighter "cooked off" a grenade – pulled the pin and waited several seconds – before coolly dropping it down a stairwell, causing the Scouts to dive for cover. When an armoured bulldozer was brought in to level the building, he shot at it before disappearing.
There is a danger that Fallujah could see a repeat of last year's Iraq invasion in which the overall objective was secured in record time, but a fierce resistance sprang up afterwards.
But there is little sign of complacency among senior officers, who give the insurgents credit for mounting a stiff defence. "They're like military organisations," said Maj John Reynolds, 2-2's operations officer. "They have platoons and they report to a company. They had observers, they put out IED's [improvised explosive devices], they had a city-wide plan to move back."
Although the American battle plan has unfolded as predicted, so too, perhaps, has that of the insurgents, who seem to be heading for a point in the west of the city.
"Nothing has changed over the past 200 years in terms of guerrilla tactics," said Capt Pemberton. "They are co-ordinating their movements and setting up ambushes. Tactically it's a sound operation. They're not fighting a fixed fight."
Bombs and mines were planted to disrupt the American advance while fortified positions and dugouts were expertly created in the east in preparation for a breach from that direction.
In fact, the breach came from the north, but the insurgents had planned for all eventualities.
The US commander, Maj Gen Richard Natonski, said 18 US servicemen and five Iraqi government soldiers have been killed in action since the start of the assault. He said 69 American and 34 Iraqi fighters had been wounded. The Marines have had significant casualties.
Lt Col Pete Mewell, 2-2's commander, said it was possible some fighters had fled before the battle began.
"The ones that were here when we started have no chance of getting out... If they'd stand and fight it'd be a lot easier," he added.
As he spoke there was a deafening boom of US Paladin artillery guns.
"That would be the last sound they ever heard." |
"Through my night-vision goggles I could see he had a black beard and some kind of headdress. He opened fire with an AK-47, hitting me in the chest and knocking me completely over. The first three of us into the building were hit."
Sgt Laser's body armour saved his life, leaving only a bruise and an impression of his dog-tags on his chest. A second bullet hit his M16 rifle and sliced into his index finger. A third grazed his neck while a fourth lodged in his neck protector.
Many Killed in Fallujah U.S. Reservists
ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - At least nine Army and Marine reservists died in Iraq on the first full day of the Fallujah offensive, the highest single-day death toll for part-time troops since U.S. forces entered Iraq in March 2003.
Most of those killed since Monday in Fallujah, Baghdad, Mosul and other cities where insurgents are active have not been identified by military authorities, so it's not possible to give a complete account beyond Monday.
Of the nine reservists killed Monday, six were members of the Marine Corps Reserve, two were Army National Guard and one was Army Reserve.
An Army National Guard soldier from California also was killed on Sunday in Baghdad.
Nine is the highest number of part-time soldiers and Marines to have died in Iraq on a single day. The only comparable surge in deaths of reservists was in June 2004 when nine died in a four-day span, according to Pentagon records.
In the Fallujah offensive alone, at least 18 U.S. troops had been killed in action and 178 wounded by Thursday, according to Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division in Fallujah. Five Iraqi soldiers had been killed and 34 wounded, Natonski told reporters.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him to El Salvador that U.S. troops fighting to secure Fallujah "are well along in that task, and they will finish it successfully."
On the question of whether insurgents had fled the beleaguered city before the operation began, Rumsfeld said: "I have no doubt that some people did leave before it started. We also know there are a number of hundreds that didn't and have been killed. Others have been captured."
Rumsfeld said Fallujah must be eliminated as a "safe haven for extremists, former regime elements and terrorists."
The military's top officer, meanwhile, said in Washington on Thursday that no one should think that success for U.S. forces in Fallujah will mean the end of the insurgency. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was pleased with progress so far.
"From our viewpoint this is very, very successful," Myers said. "If anybody thinks that Fallujah is going to be the end of the insurgency in Iraq, that was never the objective, never our intention, and even never our hope."
Myers spoke as U.S.-led forces steadily advanced through Fallujah on the fourth day of an operation aimed at making the city safe enough so residents can vote in January's planned elections.
"The whole point is not how many insurgents are killed or captured but the return of Fallujah to a status where the people of Fallujah can go about their business without intimidation and where, hopefully, come January, we'll have elections and where they can participate," Myers said.
The Pentagon's reporting of casualties since the Fallujah offensive began Monday has been slower and more incomplete than normal, in part because the military believes that detailed information is of potential value to the insurgent forces they are battling in the Sunni Arab city.
It is unclear how many of the nine reservists killed Monday were directly involved in the Fallujah fighting. Several clearly were not; Spc. Bryan L. Freeman, of the Army Reserve's 443rd Civil Affairs Battalion in Warwick, R.I., for example, died of wounds sustained in Baghdad. Two members of the Kansas Army National Guard were killed in a car bombing in Baghdad.
National Guard and Reserve troops have played a prominent role in Iraq from the start of combat in 2003, and their numbers have grown in recent months. They now make up more than 40 percent of the total U.S. force in Iraq. There is no information on how many are now in Fallujah.
Among the active-duty soldiers killed in Fallujah was Command Sgt. Maj. Steven W. Faulkenburg, 45, of Huntingburg, Ind. He was the senior noncommissioned officer in the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. The Pentagon said he was struck by small arms fire Tuesday.
ON THE NET
Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.net |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
muggedliberal
Seaman Apprentice
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 92
Location: Alabama
|
| Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 4:10 am Post subject: |
|
|
Okay... does anyone have any idea what's going on at Drudge? For quite a while now, he's had "Black Flag is a Deadly Omen in the Haze of Fallujah's Streets", but there still is no working link.
Anyone know what this is about?
~mugged~ |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
granny23
Seaman Recruit
Joined: 19 Sep 2004
Posts: 46
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JB Stone
Guest
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 2:35 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: | | Natonski also says this time, the military used swarms of aircraft. More than 20 types pounded the city before and during the assault. |
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The body of a blonde-haired woman with her legs and arms cut off and throat slit was found Sunday lying on a street in Fallujah,
"It is a female ... missing all four appendages, with a slashed throat and disemboweled, she has been dead for a while but only in this location for a day or two," said Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the Navy Corps, who had inspected the body.
| Quote: | Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Street By Street
Even before first light -- U.S. Marines, soldiers and Iraqi National Guard troops swarmed into Falluja. Tanks and heavily armored Bradley Fighting used their main guns to blow up cars and buses parked down side streets -- just in case they might be booby-trapped -- packed with explosives.
"This is a frigging ghost town," says Corporal Steven Wolf, a squad leader for the vehicle the CAAT (Combined Anti Armor Team) Platoon. The streets are deserted. But there are some exceptions. The dead.
The Marines are operating with liberal rules of engagement.
"Everything to the west is weapons free," radios Staff Sgt. Sam Mortimer of Seattle, Washington. Weapons Free means the marines can shoot whatever they see -- it's all considered hostile.
Our humvees pass by a body of a man in the center of the street. There is hole through his left eyes socket where a Marine sniper round passed cleanly through.
Down another side street is the body of a second man. This one dressed in clean white sneakers and athletic pants. He is on his back -- his arms behind his head, his face seems nearly peaceful, content. Not far from him--a Russian-made Dragonov sniper rifle. From the black ammo vest strapped to his chest loose 7.62 rounds have spilled to the ground.
The Marines I'm embedded with are nearly ebullient. This looks to be a cakewalk.
One jokes they'll be sipping 'Pina Coladas by the Euphrates River by fifteen-hundred.'
There is the occasional popgun crack of an AK-47 being fired. Usually just single rounds so the shooter can avoid detection. These "nuisances are met with overwhelming firepower. The concussion from the main gun on an Abrams M1 tank is powerful enough to knock you off your feet if you get to close.
The deep "whoomps" flashing from their long muzzles echo across the city while Bradleys wind down their 25-millimeter cannons on suspicious targets.
Down every other alleyway a vehicles is engulfed in furious orange flames.
Black smoke billows from building in the distance.
Almost to a man -- the 3.1 Marines I'm embedded with have all lost friends in this protracted war of attrition. They are eager "to get some," to pay "haji" back for the car bombs and IED's (improvised explosive devices) that have killed or maimed so many of their brother "Devil Dogs."
They are extremely likeable -- these young Marines -- full of bravado and easygoing about the danger that surrounds them. Some thumb through Maxim Magazine, others the Bible while the wait patiently to reign down death and destruction on their enemies.
"We're going to let loose the dogs of war," says Staff Sgt. Mortimer, "before the Falluja offensive begins. "It will be hell," he says, smiling after.
This levity continues until the Marines turn the corner onto a main street they've tactically dubbed, "Elizabeth."
Despite the constant weapons fire and explosion that have accompanied our advance -- this one is different -- it's directed at the Marines. As a squad from India Company passes by a way with a spray painted rocket propelled grenade launcher -- a real RPG round explodes against it. One Marines' face is burned by the powder and hot gas -- another has caught shrapnel in the leg, a third has been shot in the finger by the small arms fire that followed. The Marines are outraged. They turn their M-16's on the building to the west where they believe the shooter is hiding. But that's just an appetizer.
A gunner sitting in the armored turret of a humvee fires 40-millimeter grenades non-stop into the building -- until the gun jams.
Staff Sgt. Terry Mcelwain of Burden, Kansas is pissed. He grabs the bazooka-like AT-4 rocket launcher from the back of another humvee. It's fire trail zips into the now smoking building. Mcelwain wants Weapons Company to fire a tow missile into it as well, but low hanging electrical wires make it impossible -- so he calls up the tanks instead.
Two Abrams lumber toward the target. They stop and fire their main guns in unison. The explosion shakes the street. But the Marines aren't done yet.
They pour in more rounds from 50 caliber machine guns and their M16's.
But as the unit moves past the building, going from east to west, another RPG explodes behind them, then a third. More casualties. A Navy Corpsman cut the pants leg off one of the injured and wraps a guaze dressing around the bleeding wound while another Marine covers with a 249-SAW (squad Assault Weapon). But regardless of how much firepower the Marines bring to bear -- they can't seem to silence this phantom enemy, which continues to fire on them from the rear.
Then insurgent snipers begin firing in front of the Marines as well. One round pierces the Kevlar helmet a twenty-year old Mark 19 gunner -- in my vehicle. He is badly wounded. He's put in a canvas stretcher and six Marines run through the streets carrying him to a waiting military ambulance.
Shortly after -- another RPG round hits a humvee, but doesn't explode. The Marines are rattled but uninjured. A Marine who has caught shrapnel in the face is led to the safety of an empty storefront -- his eyes bandaged shut -- his hands outstretched -- probing the air in front of him.
The Marines know they are being hunted. Boxed from the east and the west in a treacherous kill zone by an enemy they can feel -- but can't see. Their superior firepower is checked by the insurgent's knowledge of the city -- their cunning in using blind alleyways and the crooks and crannies of buildings to pick off the Marines.
The gun battle continues late into the night -- eventually an AC-130 gunship is called in and strafes Elizabeth Street with its mini guns. With eight of their men wounded--it is a bloody and disappointing start for the Marines -- and a reminder that to win the battle for Falluja -- they will likely have to fight as they did today block by block, street by street.
~~~~~~~~~
Here's a blog from a journalist in Falluja. Although he is there for NBC, the blog is personal and not affiliated with NBC. Excellent reporting from the inside. The real deal:
http://www.kevinsites.net/2004_11_07_archive.html#110027008986926487
I would take his posts with a grain of salt. While he has excellent photos, he juices up his reporting for reasons unknown too me and I suspect another motive. He blogged while working for CNN and they shut him down. He was captured and released while working for CNN. Various anti-war sites link to him (VCS for one and a German one which had to have his or an agent's permission to print his photos). I feel that he gives far too much information on his and troop location, etc.. Little Green Footballs called him the consummate defeatist:
|
http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=13101
http://www2.swiftvets.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=17236
http://www.kevinsites.net/2004_11_07_archive.html#110027008986926487
(Baghdad, Iraq-AP) Nov. 14, 2004 - Another violent Sunday across Iraq transpired as the effort to fully secure Fallujah continued. The military says it could be several more days before Fallujah is secured.
So far at least 38 Americans have been killed in the struggle and 275 were wounded. Officials believe more than 1,200 insurgents were killed. And Iraq's prime minister says about 400 suspected insurgents have been arrested, some of them foreigners.
Insurgents stormed two police stations in Mosul Sunday, killing at least six Iraqi troops. Saboteurs set fire to four northern oil wells. Heavy explosions rattled central Baghdad near the Palestine and Sheraton hotels after nightfall.
In Fallujah, Marines found the mutilated body of a Western woman as they searched for militants still holding out in the city after weeklong fighting. The woman could not be immediately identified, but a British aide worker and a Pole are the only Western women known to have been taken hostage.
Despite the continuing violence, the Marine general who designed the ground attack on Fallujah says this time, they did it right. Major General Richard Natonski says the assault on the Iraqi city succeeded in part because of lessons learned in April.
Back then, 2,000 Marines fought for three weeks but failed to take Fallujah. This time, war planners sent six times the troops. They fought their way across the city in just six days.
Natonski also says this time, the military used swarms of aircraft. More than 20 types pounded the city before and during the assault.
| Quote: | Body of blonde Caucasian woman found in Fallujah
Updated 08:50am (Mla time) Nov 15, 2004
Agence France-Presse
Get INQ7 breaking news on your Smart mobile phone in the Philippines. Send INQ7 BREAKING to 386.
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The body of a blonde-haired woman with her legs and arms cut off and throat slit was found Sunday lying on a street in Fallujah, a notorious Iraqi enclave for hostage-takers, US Marines said.
"It is definitely a Caucasian woman with long blonde hair," said a military official, who cut open a cover that had been over the corpse.
Another unit stumbled across eight Arab men, apparently Iraqis, who had been shot in the head execution-style, and laid out in two courtyards, four in each, said an AFP reporter embedded with the marines.
The gruesome discoveries were made as marines moved through the south of Fallujah, hunting out the remaining rebels after a week of fierce fighting to regain control of the city.
"It is a female ... missing all four appendages, with a slashed throat and disemboweled, she has been dead for a while but only in this location for a day or two," said Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the Navy Corps, who had inspected the body.
AFP photographer embedded with the marines noted that the woman was wearing a blue dress and her face was completely disfigured.
Sweeps of rubble-strewn neighborhoods in Fallujah have uncovered a grisly underworld of hostage slaughterhouses, prisons and torture chambers as well as the corpses of Iraqis who had been executed, marines say.
Later in the day, a unit of marines found the eight men, all fairly burly and aged between about 20 and 45, in central Fallujah, said the AFP reporter.
The bodies had no uniforms or distinguishing features to identify them, but two were simply dressed in their underwear, he said.
Surviving hostages have also been found, but only one has been a foreigner -- a Syrian driver who was abducted with two French journalists in August.
Two foreign women have been abducted in Iraq and remain missing.
One, Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole, has blonde hair, the other, British aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, has chestnut-colored hair.
Borcz, married to an Iraqi and a resident in Iraq for 30 years, was abducted late last month. She has appeared in two video recordings appealing to the Polish government to help her but her fate is unknown.
Hassan, the Iraqi head of relief agency CARE International, was kidnapped on her way to work in Baghdad on October 19 and has appeared in three videos.
She also holds Iraqi citizenship after marrying an Iraq and is a long-term resident of the country. Her fate too is unknown.
A marine staff sergeant, who deals with detainees, said it appeared as though a kidnapping squad used Fallujah to hold its captives.
"We broke a safe in one room and found a list of Iraqi hostages," he said.
"These guys have a kidnap squad, working outside Fallujah and bringing their victims to the city," he told AFP, without giving his name.
Just one-and-a-half days into the operation, marines found alive Mohammed al-Jundi, the Syrian driver who was kidnapped with French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot.
"I have no news of the French hostages," the staff sergeant added.
Different militant groups have kidnapped more than 200 foreigners in Iraq since April and many have been beheaded.
|
Bomb labs, hostages found in Fallujah
By EDWARD HARRIS
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- U.S. Marines have found beheading chambers, bomb-making factories and even one Iraqi hostage as they swept through Fallujah - turning up hard evidence of the city's role in the insurgent campaign to drive American forces from Iraq.
Marines on Sunday showed off what they called a bomb-making factory, where insurgents prepared roadside explosives and car bombs that have killed hundreds of Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops.
Wires, cell phones, Motorola handheld radios and a Plastic foam box packed with C4 plastic explosives sat in the dark building down an alley, along with three balaclava-style masks reading: "There is only one god, Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger."
"It's all significant because this is not the kind of stuff an average household has," said Lt. Kevin Kimner, 25, of Cincinnati assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. "This is better than Radio Shack."
So far U.S. troops have only found two hostages, one Iraqi and one Syrian. Marines last week found the Iraqi in a room with a black banner bearing the logo of one of Iraq's extremist groups. He was chained to the wall, shackled hand and foot in front of a video camera. The floor was covered with blood.
The rescued Syrian was the driver for two French journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, missing since August. The journalists have not been found, but France maintains they are still alive.
A Marine officer said he found signs that at least one foreign hostage was beheaded in that room. The Marine, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not give details.
The Iraqi hostage, who had been beaten on the back with steel cables, said his tormentors were Syrian and that he thought he was in Syria until the Marines found him, the Marine said. Other militants came and went, but "The Syrians were always in charge," the Marine said.
The hostage was in a room - inside a compound that also had AK-47 rifles, improvised bombs, fake identification cards and shoulder-fired missiles that could down an airliner. Beneath it were tunnels running under the northern Jolan neighborhood.
Marines said weapons depots were strategically placed throughout Jolan. Insurgents marked many of the caches with a piece of brick or rock, suspended from the buildings by a piece of string or wire.
U.S. officials hope that by retaking Fallujah they can deprive the rebels of an important headquarters and boost security in Iraq ahead of elections scheduled for January.
Among the rebels' most-fearsome weapons have been the car bombs and roadside explosives that have targeted military convoys but also churches and other areas where civilians gather.
On Sunday, a hollowed-out plastic foam container about the size of two shoe boxes lay in the bomb lab, packed with plastic explosives and wires. The plastic foam box was covered in cloth to disguise it as an innocuous package.
Scattered on the ground nearby - cell phones, walkie-talkies, Motorola handheld radios - all used as detonators lay tangled in coils of wire. There was a computer without a hard drive and a box full of professional explosives-triggering.
"We've seen better," Kimner said of the detonators. "But they're reliable and they do the job right."
When Marines uncovered the lab in a Saturday sweep. Among the clutter were two wills, addressed to friends and family in Algeria.
"I will join my friends in heaven," the will read. "Don't cry for me. Celebrate my death."
| Quote: | Among the clutter were two wills, addressed to friends and family in Algeria.
"I will join my friends in heaven," the will read. "Don't cry for me. Celebrate my death." |
Works for me....
http://www.heberger-image.com/files/apologizeforthat1.jpg |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JB Stone
Guest
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 2:45 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
Works for me....
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JB Stone
Guest
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 4:19 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: | Quote:
The body of a blonde-haired woman with her legs and arms cut off and throat slit was found Sunday lying on a street in Fallujah, a notorious Iraqi enclave for hostage-takers, US Marines said.
This is not even shocking anymore. We are dealing with people who are sociopaths of the lowest order who probably get some perverse pleasure doing this to a dead body. On this continent we call them serial killers. If the peaceniks continue to support these sick bastards they should be institutionalized.
This afternoon's CNN's coverage of the successful operation in Fallujah made me sick. The female anchor kept pounding away at the General she was interviewing, insinuating that the insurgents were gaining in other cities etc. etc. They have nothing positive to say. I don't think they have any respect for the American soldier, they think they are above these lowly people. Arrogant shyte heads.They should be so proud of their army and give them the credit they rightfully deserve.
I am so mad at these media twits, Mad Mad Sorry for my rant. |
Not shocking...???
Yeah, I KNOW...it's starting to sound like L.A.
I'm pretty SURE this woman was a POLISH hostage.
One group you do NOT want to piss off are the Polish GROM troops....[special forces]
VERY fierce fighters.
Rudyard Kipling
The Wrath of The Saxon
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxons began to hate,
They were not easily moved,
They were icy-willing to wait
Till every count should be proved
Ere the Saxons began to hate.
Their voices were even and low,
Their eyes were level and straight,
There was neither sign nor show,
When the Saxons began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd
It was not taught by the State,
No man spoke it aloud,
When the Saxons began to hate.
It was not suddenly bred,
It will not swiftly abate
Through the chilled years ahead
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxons began to hate.
– R. Kipling
| Quote: | “And, if you'd roil up the Steppes with your Guns,
Upon studying the descendants of Huns,
A smart thinking Saxon, May go about axin'
But, no matter how furious his role,
Were he wont to return safe to his hut,
Should NEVER, EVER
Piss Off a Pole!”
*******************************
J.B. Stone, not just any ol' Dumb Polack. 04/19/02
|
GROM & US Navy SEALS....
When the POLES say, "I've got your back"....they MEAN it....!!!
| Quote: | The GROM Factor (Poland's special forces in Iraq - from 2003)
Daily Standard ^ | 05/08/2003 | Victorino Matus
The Weekly Standard
The GROM Factor: Haven't heard of Poland's Special Forces? They're real, they're serious, and they're here to save the day.
by Victorino Matus 05/08/2003 2:40:00 PM
Victorino Matus, assistant managing editor
IT CAME AS A SURPRISE to many when the U.S. postwar plans for Iraq were finally revealed. Like Gaul, Iraq would be divided into three parts: an American zone, a British zone, and a Polish zone. But what role did Poland play during the war? It turns out a very important one--albeit one that was kept mostly secret.
One of the primary objectives during the early stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom was the port at Umm Qasr. Without it, delivering adequate humanitarian aid to the rest of Iraq would have been nearly impossible for the coalition. Not long after the start of the war, the port was secured--in large part thanks to GROM, Poland's elite commandos.
Who even knew Poland had special forces? For a while, not many. The Polish government waited three years before publicly disclosing GROM's existence. Standing for Grupa Reagowania Operacyjno Mobilnego (Operational Mobile Response Group), the name actually stems from a special-forces commander, Gromoslaw Czempinski, who, during the first Gulf War, led a Polish unit into Western Iraq to rescue a group of CIA operatives. One of the other men on that secret mission was Slawomir Petelicki--the father of GROM.
"GROM was my idea," General Petelicki says in his husky, accented voice. "I presented it to the new democratic government" in 1991 "and because I liked to give honor to the commander of my unit, I named it after Gromoslaw." (Grom also means thunder in Polish.) Petelicki, now retired from the military, spoke from Warsaw where he is now an independent consultant for, among others, Ernst & Young. It's quite a change of pace for a man once described in Jane's Intelligence Review as "his country's James Bond and Rambo wrapped neatly into one daunting package." (Petelicki also serves as chairman of the Special Forces Foundation. "I try to help former commandos and discourage them from going into organized crime--where there are many lucrative offers for work.")
Petelicki tried selling his idea of an elite Polish commando group much earlier, "but those Russians didn't like to have real special forces operating in Poland--they feared we could start training in guerrilla warfare against them." But the need did arise in 1990, following Operation Bridge, in which Poland helped Soviet Jews enter Israel. Intelligence reports indicated that Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were planning reprisals inside the Polish border. Then-Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki recognized the threat and approved of Petelicki's plan for a new counter-terror force.
"I had a lot of candidates at first" says the general. "That first team I assembled from people I knew well. They were all in their 30s. Now the age of recruits is about 26." According to Jane's Intelligence Review, "GROM candidates were first subjected to a grueling psychological examination meant to search for confident and innovative soldiers as well as those who, though they might be lacking in physical strength, possessed the rare gift of internal iron will." The candidates then undergo back-breaking training deep in the Carpathian Mountains.
Only 1 to 5 percent of these candidates actually get into GROM. But once they are in, the real training begins: GROM operators practice "killing house" entries (with commanders often serving as hostages), storm hijacked commercial airliners complete with mannequin terrorists and bullet traps, and lead raids onto ships and offshore platforms. All of this is done with live ammunition. The commandos are trained in paramedics and demolitions and many are SCUBA experts. They mostly work in four to six-man assault teams except for the snipers who are separate because, as Petelicki explains, "that is a job for special people and they are very hard to replace."
Radek Sikorski, Poland's former deputy minister of defense and now executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative, recently told me he witnessed the snipers at their best during a training exercise in 1999. "The GROM operators were working alongside the Delta Force and were tasked with rescuing the chairman of the National Bank of Poland. He was being held hostage by terrorists in possession of a nuclear device." Sikorski says the snipers waited for days in complete disguise. "They just followed the terrorists' routines and then started to pick them off one by one."
GROM operators are said to be martial arts experts and capable of "cold killing." "We created our own style of martial arts," says Petelicki. "I have an old friend who is a master of karate and jujitsu and is a sixth degree black belt. He created the style with other specialists--it is most similar to what the Israelis do."
And what about "cold killing"? Asked if the ominous term refers to garrotes or piano wire, Petelicki replies "Yes." Pausing to choose his words carefully, he explains, "Many things. For instance, we can create a weapon from . . . well . . . many things." The weapon used most by GROM is the MP5 submachine gun. They also get to choose their own sidearm--most choose either the Glock Model 19 or the SIG-Sauer P228.
PETELICKI says that GROM is a mixture of the Delta Force, SAS, and the Navy SEALs. "We took what we found best from each group." (GROM trainers have been to Fort Bragg as well as Hereford--home of the SAS.)
For the past twelve years, GROM operators have engaged in numerous operations, including peacekeeping in the Balkans and Haiti. In 1997, they successfully captured Slavko Dokmanovic, aka, "the Butcher of Vukovar" who was held responsible for the murder of 260 Croats. Despite being well-protected by Serb commandos, Dokmanovic was successfully captured alive (his bodyguards didn't fare so well).
So what was the significance in having 56 commandos from the 300-member GROM take part in Operation Iraqi Freedom? "This war saved GROM," says Petelicki. "Without it, it would have been broken up between the army and navy. But now everyone knows about GROM in Poland and they are proud of them."
Radek Sikorski observes that "It was wise for the United States to show countries who backed it in this war that they are appreciated. This will probably pave the way for more 'coalitions of the willing.' Poland took a lot of risks supporting America. It also took a beating from some of its European friends." Sikorski thinks this could be the beginning of a special relationship with the United States, akin to the one shared by Great Britain, but warns "it is still in the very early stages and much will also depend on America's staying power in the region, its willingness to remain interested in Central Europe. One thing the Americans could do is move their bases out of Germany and into Poland, which has less population density and greater space to conduct exercises."
Since GROM's creation 12 years ago, only 4 commandos have been killed in operations. I asked General Petelicki if, during those years, there is one mission that stands out. "Although 70 percent of our operations are still top secret, the one operation I liked best was this last one at Umm Qasr. That was definitely my favorite. [He sighs.] I was jealous I could not be there instead of Colonel Polko [the current commander of GROM]. Umm Qasr was a very risky operation--a lot of explosives were used--but there were no casualties for us." He adds, "I liked it because we were able to help our friends, the Americans, who helped us create GROM. It was a real masterpiece."
Victorino Matus is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard. |
GROM operators are said to be martial arts experts and capable of "cold killing." "We created our own style of martial arts," says Petelicki. "I have an old friend who is a master of karate and jujitsu and is a sixth degree black belt. He created the style with other specialists--it is most similar to what the Israelis do."
And what about "cold killing"? Asked if the ominous term refers to garrotes or piano wire, Petelicki replies "Yes." Pausing to choose his words carefully, he explains, "Many things. For instance, we can create a weapon from . . . well . . . many things." The weapon used most by GROM is the MP5 submachine gun. They also get to choose their own sidearm--most choose either the Glock Model 19 or the SIG-Sauer P228.
PETELICKI says that GROM is a mixture of the Delta Force, SAS, and the Navy SEALs. "We took what we found best from each group." (GROM trainers have been to Fort Bragg as well as Hereford--home of the SAS.)
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
arkadyfolkner
PO3
Joined: 12 Sep 2004
Posts: 271
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 6:06 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Don't mess with a Pole! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
GiveMeFreedom
PO3
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 279
Location: Wisconsin
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
GiveMeFreedom
PO3
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 279
Location: Wisconsin
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JB Stone
Guest
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 3:31 pm Post subject: |
|
|
An injured Iraqi woman cries out at the scene of an insurgent mortar strike in the Dora section of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 15, 2004. The attack killed seven Iraqis and wounded seven others, including women and children, hospital officials and residents said.
Iraqi men grieve at the scene of an insurgent mortar strike in the Dora section of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 15, 2004. The attack killed seven Iraqis and wounded seven others, including women and children, hospital officials and residents said.
U.S. Marines of the 1st Division rest outside a house in the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 15, 2004. U.S. ground forces were trying to corner the remaining resistance in the city.
Firefighters work at the scene of an oil well fire in Khabbaza, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 15, 2004, after saboteurs set off successive explosions Sunday, causing fires at four oil wells in Iraq's northern fields. Iraq's oil industry, which provides desperately needed money for Iraq's reconstruction efforts, has been the target of repeated attacks by insurgents in recent months.
A U.S. Marine of the 1st Division carries a mascot for good luck in his backpack as his unit pushed further into the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004.
[who's got YOUR back...???]
U.S. Marines of the 1st Division pass by dead bodies in the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004. U.S. military officials said Saturday that U.S. Forces had now "occupied" the entire city of Fallujah.
A US Marine of the 1st Division is evacuted to a makeshift hospital after receiving shrapnel injuries in the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004. The U.S. military's ground and air assault of Fallujah has gone quicker than expected, with the entire city occupied after six days of fighting, the Marine commander who planned the offensive said Sunday
Army operating room nurses walk to the hospital morgue with the body of a U.S. Marine who died from wounds suffered in Fallujah, according to hospital officials, while at the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004. The body will be flown back to the United States.
U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski stands at the bridge in the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, where the bodies of two American contractors killed by militants were strung up in March, sparking the earlier U.S. siege, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004.
A US Marine of the 1st Division writes the words "Dark Horse" on a beam of the bridge western Fallujah, Iraq, where the bodies of two American contractors killed by militants were strung up in March, sparking the earlier U.S. siege, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004. An earlier message left by soldiers reads: "This is for the Americans of Blackwater that were murdered here in 2004, Semper Fidelis 3/5."
[payback's a *****...!!!]
American Army doctors treat the broken leg of an Iraqi prisoner of war captured in Fallujah, according to hospital officials, after he was transported to the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004.
[how many of OUR guys do you figure they "saved" during the battle...???]
US Marines of the 1st Division raid a house where they found improvised explosive devices (IED) in the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004.
[note the CELL PHONE triggering device]
Army operating room nurses pause in the hospital morgue with the body of an American Marine who died from wounds suffered in Fallujah, according to hospital officials, while at the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004. After arriving to the morgue, they found the holding container, left, full of bodies, and had to find another spot for storage until the Marine could be transferred back to the United States.
| Quote: | US JETS DESTROY FALLUJAH TUNNELS
Nov 15 2004
US MARINES in Fallujah are destroying a vast network of tunnels and underground bunkers used by rebels.
Warplanes have dropped four 2000lb bombs on the tunnels in a bid to kill remaining insurgents.
The blasts set off 45 minutes of explosions as underground munitions dumps were ignited.
Soldiers yesterday discovered a warren of bunkers linked by tunnels. The network had even been stocked with medical supplies.
US and Iraqi troops have secured Fallujah after six days of street battles,but fighting continued last night as soldiers tried to mop up pockets of resistance.
As many as 31 US soldiers and six of their Iraqi allies have been killed in the battle. American commanders claim more than 1200 rebels have died.
Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, said about 400 suspected rebels had been arrested, including Syrians, Saudis, Afghans and Moroccans.
An aid convoy from the Iraqi Red Crescent was still not being allowed to enter Fallujah. The US military said it did not think any civilians were trapped in the city.
Violence continued throughout Iraq. Insurgents clashed with US troops in the northern town of Beiji, and at least six people died in a gun battle in the town's market.
After two hours of fighting, US and Iraqi forces took back a police station seized by rebels in the northern city of Mosul.
Insurgents stormed and looted nine police stations last week as they seized large parts of the city. Yesterday, Allawi said law and order was 'steadily' returning.
Fighting was also reported in Kirkuk, and saboteurs torched four oil wells in the north.
# TWO female relatives of Allawi have been released after being kidnapped last week, Arab TV station al-Jazeera claimed last night. The station said the remier's 75-year-old cousin was still being held. |
US Encountering Pockets of Resistance in Fallujah
By Ursula Lindsey
Cairo
15 November 2004
emailme.gif printerfriendly.gif
U.S. commanders in Iraq say they have almost complete control of the city of Fallujah, after several days of fighting in which 38 U.S. troops, six Iraqi soldiers and an estimated 1,200 insurgents have been killed. Pockets of resistance remain in Fallujah, and violence has spread to other areas of Iraq.
U.S. forces resumed heavy airstrikes and artillery fire against the city of Fallujah on Monday. U.S. Major-General Richard Natonski says the assault was flawlessly executed, and moving ahead of schedule. But U.S. forces are still encountering pockets of resistance on the southern side of the city.
General Mohamed Kadry Said, a military expert at the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, says he is surprised by the intense resistance put up by insurgents. He says the U.S. forces and the Iraqi provisional government cannot afford to carry out this kind of military operation often, and need to do more to win over the people who live in so-called insurgent strongholds like Fallujah.
"If they repeat this again in another city, and [there is] the same fight, the same destruction, the same number of people killed, it will end with an uprising in Iraq against the Americans, and maybe also against the Iraqi government," stated General Said. "So, in my view, the military operation is necessary, just to give some strong position, but at the same time, it should be mixed with active political engagement."
Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi demanded that Fallujah hand over al-Qaida-connected terrorist leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who U.S. and Iraqi officials say was based in the city. The leaders of Fallujah denied that, and refused U.S. and Iraqi forces access to the city. Al-Zarqawi was not found during the attack.
A Red Crescent convoy hoping to deliver food, water and medical aid to civilians who remained in the city was not allowed to enter Fallujah on Monday. The number of civilian casualties is unknown. The city came under heavy bombardment and many buildings have been destroyed.
Fighters who escaped Fallujah or others who sympathize with them are suspected in attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces in many of the cities in the northwestern Sunni area of the country.
On Monday, insurgents opened fire on Iraqi police from inside a mosque in Baqouba. Police stations and a US base were also attacked in the nearby town of Buhriz. And gunmen attacked an Iraqi police station and a National Guard headquarters in Suwayrah, just south of Baghdad, leaving seven Iraqi officers dead.
Also on Monday, fighting broke out in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, between militants and U.S. forces. Clerics in the city reportedly called on citizens to kick out bands of gunmen who have come from outside. A U.S. convoy came under attack north of the city.
In Mosul, where there have been clashes between insurgents and police forces for the last several days, insurgents set fire to the governor's house.
In Baghdad on Sunday, gunmen attacked the Polish Embassy, and rockets and mortars were fired at hotels in the center of the city.
| Quote: | Wounded U.S. troops describe massive insurgent firepower in Fallujah
Associated Press
LANDSTUHL, Germany - U.S. troops injured in the battle for the Iraqi insurgent stronghold of Fallujah on Monday recalled harrowing street fighting before their wounds took them out of action and to a military hospital in Germany for treatment.
Four wounded servicemen described coming under heavy fire in a city teeming with masked, well-armed snipers who roamed the streets in small teams and fired from rooftops.
"They were ready to fight to the death," Lance Cpl. Travis Schafer, a rifleman with a Marine battalion, told reporters at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
Like the others, Schafer was flown out to the U.S. military hospital after being injured. Some 70 wounded soldiers have been arriving daily since the battle to oust Islamic militants from Fallujah began a week ago - about twice the normal number of casualties from Iraq.
Schafer's right hand was bandaged from where he had been hit by shrapnel after a rocket-propelled grenade exploded 15 yards to his right on a deserted marketplace.
"It's house to house fighting," he said. "Rooftop to rooftop."
Lance Cpl. Ryan Chapman, with the 1st Marine Regiment, wore an ugly scar over his left eye as a reminder of his encounter with an insurgent sniper.
As his unit came under sustained fire from rocket-propelled grenades and snipers, Chapman had been tracking a sniper with the telescopic sight of his wire-guided missile launcher.
But he was hit first, the bullet meant to kill him wounding his forehead just below the edge of his helmet.
Chapman, 22, acknowledged he had been lucky. But he said he was eager to get back into the action.
"It's nothing too serious. It cracked my skull but I think it looks worse than it is," he told reporters. "I want to go back - my buddies are out there."
U.S. forces have fought for the last week to wrest Fallujah from insurgents after an unsuccessful attempt in April.
Chapman, of Lawrence, Kansas, was among 419 patients admitted to Landstuhl in the last week, 233 of whom had combat-related injuries, according to doctors. The most common wounds have been from bullets or blast injuries from rocket-propelled grenades.
The Fallujah insurgents appeared well-organized and surprisingly heavily armed, soldiers said.
"They had their own little plan of what they were going to do, a pretty set idea of where they were going to fight," said U.S. Army Spc. Kris Clinkscales, 22, of San Antonio, Texas, his right arm in a sling with shrapnel wounds.
Schafer, of Puyallup, Washington, said he was surprised by the fighters' firepower.
"It seemed like they have a pretty unlimited amount of RPGs and mortars. They seemed to fling those about wildly," he said.
Schafer, with the 1st Marine Regiment, said his unit had only pushed 400 yards into the city before it started taking heavy fire from small arms, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
"They were locking on us with RPGs and mortars from buildings all around us," the 20-year-old said. "Even from mosques they were firing - from all over the place."
Landstuhl receives wounded U.S. troops from all over the world. While most the recent casualties are from Fallujah, officials do not have a precise breakdown.
Another 46 wounded troops from Iraq were en route to the hospital Monday, Landstuhl spokeswoman Marie Shaw said.
On Sunday, U.S. force in Fallujah battled pockets of hardcore defenders scattered inside the Sunni Muslim stronghold. It was estimated that the fight would go on for several more days.
The U.S. military has estimated that 38 U.S. troops were killed in the assault and 275 wounded by Sunday, and that more than 1,200 insurgents have been killed.
|
| Quote: | Any building can become battleground in Fallujah
By Gordon Trowbridge, Army Times
FALLUJAH, Iraq — U.S. troops in this city are engaged in a painstaking and perilous house-by-house effort to root out insurgents and eliminate their ability to threaten the American-backed Iraqi government.
Marines with a Civil Affairs unit prepare to storm a water facility in Fallujah on Monday.
By Patrick Baz, AFP
U.S. military officials say most of Fallujah is under their control. But the city remains dangerous, as Alpha Company of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines discovered in two days of intense combat.
Marines from the unit, which is occupying a northeastern sector of the city, fought a trio of firefights over the weekend.
One involved roughly 30 insurgents and left at least 12 of the enemy dead.
"This is some of the most physically intensive type of warfare," Capt. Lee Johnson, Alpha Company's commander, said Sunday. "It takes a lot out of the Marines, a lot of resources, and it's difficult to control."
The urban warfare, fought at extremely close quarters, makes it difficult for U.S. troops to lean on their massive advantage in artillery and air power.
Even as his Marines swept through the area, clearing one house at a time, Johnson worried that insurgents would slip away and reoccupy territory his men thought they had under control. Though he acknowledged that commanders always want more resources, he said he worries that he lacks the manpower needed to maintain control of his sector of the city.
"There is always the danger of reinfestation," Johnson said. "These guys are masters of it."
He noted another problem: If Marines are forced to clear areas of insurgents a second time, "that is not a morale booster."
Alpha Company ran smack into Fallujah's perils on Saturday. One of the company's three platoons was going over a city block, examining houses one by one in search of insurgents and weapons caches.
As Marines moved up to the door of one building, AK-47 fire exploded out the windows. The U.S. troops fell back. They were able to clear out the building, but only after they fired an anti-tank rocket through one window, a nearby platoon sent reinforcements and, after surviving insurgents had been chased into a nearby building, a U.S. jet circling overhead dropped a 500-pound bomb.
"They let us get right up to the door. It seemed just like all the other buildings," said Cpl. Robert Enriquez Jr., 22, of Woodbridge, Va. Company leaders credited Enriquez with firing the AT-4 rocket at a crucial moment in the 20-minute firefight. "It was like being on the (firing) range when someone yelled, 'Open fire!' " he said.
The company saw less combat on Sunday, but another patrol discovered a collection of weapons abandoned by insurgents. Neighboring houses contained more than a dozen artillery shells. Insurgents often use the shells in roadside bombs and car bombs. They also found rifles, mines, a half-dozen mortar shells and assorted rockets and pipe bombs.
A Mitsubishi pickup discovered outside one of the house had an anti-aircraft gun bolted into the truck bed. Once green, the truck had been painted over in white; Marines suspected that it had been stolen from Iraqi security forces.
Another concern for U.S. commanders was the performance of Iraqi soldiers. A 40-man Iraqi unit had been attached to Alpha four days before the Fallujah operation began. By the night Alpha entered the city, that unit had shrunk to 22 soldiers.
During Saturday's firefight, the Iraqis had been patrolling a neighboring block. When U.S. officers called on them to support the Marines under attack, only a handful followed. Most remained in place and appeared confused and frightened.
"The frustration is, there are about three of them who are motivated, who want to fight," Johnson said. "And I want to make those three Marines."
Despite the difficulties, Lt. Col. Mike Ramos, who as 1st Battalion's commander leads Alpha and three other companies, said he was confident he had enough troops to complete the mission.
"We're right in the sweet spot on the number of troops," Ramos said. He said more troops in the confined streets of the city would make coordination more difficult and increase the chances of "friendly fire" incidents — U.S. troops shooting at each other by mistake.
"We're carefully tracking the trends that we see," he said. "And there are clearly some patterns the insurgents are following that we are exploiting to clear the city." |
Another concern for U.S. commanders was the performance of Iraqi soldiers. A 40-man Iraqi unit had been attached to Alpha four days before the Fallujah operation began. By the night Alpha entered the city, that unit had shrunk to 22 soldiers.
During Saturday's firefight, the Iraqis had been patrolling a neighboring block. When U.S. officers called on them to support the Marines under attack, only a handful followed. Most remained in place and appeared confused and frightened.
"The frustration is, there are about three of them who are motivated, who want to fight," Johnson said. "And I want to make those three Marines."
| Quote: | FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The body of a blonde-haired woman with her legs and arms cut off and throat slit was found Sunday lying on a street in Fallujah, a notorious Iraqi enclave for hostage-takers, US Marines said.
"It is definitely a Caucasian woman with long blonde hair," said a military official, who cut open a cover that had been over the corpse.
Another unit stumbled across eight Arab men, apparently Iraqis, who had been shot in the head execution-style, and laid out in two courtyards, four in each, said an AFP reporter embedded with the marines.
The gruesome discoveries were made as marines moved through the south of Fallujah, hunting out the remaining rebels after a week of fierce fighting to regain control of the city.
"It is a female ... missing all four appendages, with a slashed throat and disemboweled, she has been dead for a while but only in this location for a day or two," said Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the Navy Corps, who had inspected the body.
An
Print this story
Send this story
Write the editor
View other stories
AFP photographer embedded with the marines noted that the woman was wearing a blue dress and her face was completely disfigured.
Sweeps of rubble-strewn neighborhoods in Fallujah have uncovered a grisly underworld of hostage slaughterhouses, prisons and torture chambers as well as the corpses of Iraqis who had been executed, marines say.
Later in the day, a unit of marines found the eight men, all fairly burly and aged between about 20 and 45, in central Fallujah, said the AFP reporter.
The bodies had no uniforms or distinguishing features to identify them, but two were simply dressed in their underwear, he said.
Surviving hostages have also been found, but only one has been a foreigner -- a Syrian driver who was abducted with two French journalists in August.
Two foreign women have been abducted in Iraq and remain missing.
One, Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole, has blonde hair, the other, British aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, has chestnut-colored hair.
Borcz, married to an Iraqi and a resident in Iraq for 30 years, was abducted late last month. She has appeared in two video recordings appealing to the Polish government to help her but her fate is unknown.
US Marines of the 1st Division pass a mutilated body which they believe to be a western woman, in the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004. The remains, which were found lying in the street covered with a blood-soaked cloth, are to be subjected to a DNA test to try and determine identity.
[this is the Polish Woman, found with no limbs, gutted, throat slit....!!!]
Hassan, the Iraqi head of relief agency CARE International, was kidnapped on her way to work in Baghdad on October 19 and has appeared in three videos.
She also holds Iraqi citizenship after marrying an Iraq and is a long-term resident of the country. Her fate too is unknown.
A marine staff sergeant, who deals with detainees, said it appeared as though a kidnapping squad used Fallujah to hold its captives.
"We broke a safe in one room and found a list of Iraqi hostages," he said.
"These guys have a kidnap squad, working outside Fallujah and bringing their victims to the city," he told AFP, without giving his name.
Just one-and-a-half days into the operation, marines found alive Mohammed al-Jundi, the Syrian driver who was kidnapped with French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot.
"I have no news of the French hostages," the staff sergeant added.
Different militant groups have kidnapped more than 200 foreigners in Iraq since April and many have been beheaded.
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JB Stone
Guest
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 6:32 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Commanders plead for armor
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
From the Nation/Politics section
Commanders have requested to nearly double the number of armored utility vehicles in Iraq to 8,000, in yet another shift in equipment needs to keep pace with an insurgency that continues to strike troops.
Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee told of the newest requisition during a recent hourlong interview with The Washington Times.
It is the commanders' job in the field to devise the tactics to defeat an enemy made up of foreign terrorists, Saddam Hussein loyalists and criminals freed by the fallen dictator.
Back at the Pentagon, it has been Mr. Brownlee's job to make sure they have the guns, ammunition and equipment.
Perhaps in Army history there has never been a war whose character changed so quickly and required a whole new set of tactics and equipment -- within weeks.
"Suddenly, a different ballgame," Mr. Brownlee said.
U.S. war planners never foresaw that the fall of Baghdad would spawn a new enemy able to attack soldiers and Marines no matter their battlefield position. Rear-line support troops became just as vulnerable as front-line ones.
That meant the Army suddenly had a need for armored Humvee utility vehicles, armored trucks, more body armor and huge shipments of spare parts.
The problem became so acute by December that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the top commander in Iraq, sent an urgent letter to the Army saying, "I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with [readiness] rates this low." Soldiers were being killed by the score by roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devises (IEDs), that ripped through a Humvee's thin plating.
ADVERTISEMENT
You can save articles using our Insider’s Newsclips service
Within weeks, Mr. Brownlee convened a summit at the Pentagon of defense contractors who design and build armor.
In February, he traveled to AM General, which makes the ubiquitous Humvee, and to O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, which makes armor. He got the chief executives in one room.
"I told them to show me the fastest rate at which they can build these things," Mr. Brownlee recalled.
AM General responded by increasing production of "up-armored" Humvees (as opposed to "thin skin" Humvees) from 150 to 450 a month.
By this fall, the Army had put 5,000 in Iraq, only to learn a few weeks ago that commanders had upped the need to 8,000.
"We had soldiers killed by IEDs in up-armored vehicles," the acting secretary said. "If they make them powerful enough they can blow up just about anything. But they clearly have a better chance" in an armored one.
On a second front, the Army needed to start providing armor kits so mechanics in the field could plate the basic 5- and 10-ton trucks that insurgents found as easy prey. To date, the Army has sent more than 9,000 kits to Iraq.
"I'm not sure anybody in the Army ever thought we would start armoring our truck fleet," Mr. Brownlee said. "But that's what we're doing."
The Army has lost more than 800 soldiers in combat deaths in Iraq. Critics say a failure by the Pentagon to predict the insurgency left too few service members in Iraq and many of those that were there lacked body and vehicle armor.
"I expected once we took the Army down and took the main forces down, we would then begin the programs we were planning to reconstruct the country and get things moving," Mr. Brownlee said.
In addition to the armor issue, Mr. Brownlee convened a special task force to come up with ways to defeat IEDs, set up new training at Fort Polk, La., that included anti-ambush techniques and brought in the Army Corps of Engineers to shepherd many construction projects.
Mr. Brownlee, 65, a retired Army colonel who earned the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart in Vietnam, never envisioned such a large portfolio. He came to the Pentagon in 2001 as undersecretary of the Army, after serving as Sen. John W. Warner's staff director on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Brownlee said he realized Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had a penchant for CEOs to run the military branches. Mr. Rumsfeld picked Thomas White, a retired Army general and former Enron executive, as Mr. Brownlee's boss. But the White-Rumsfeld relationship fell apart over a sharp difference of opinion on force transformation.
For months, the Senate Armed Services Committee refused to act on the nomination of Air Force Secretary James G. Roche to succeed Mr. White. Finally, Mr. Roche bailed out.
The power gap has left Mr. Brownlee, at 18 months the longest serving acting Army secretary.
Powerful senators, including Ted Stevens, Alaska Republican, and Mr. Warner, Virginia Republican, supported Mr. Brownlee as the next nominee. But Mr. Rumsfeld refused and backed another businessman, Francis Harvey, whose nomination is pending in the Senate.
Mr. Brownlee has put in a steady stream of 14-hour workdays, and travels to Iraq every three months.
"Now, down deep, I hoped they might recognize that and honor me with the job," he said. "Things don't always work out the way you hope they do."
The Army now requires one-year tours in Iraq, twice as long as the Marine Corps. Mr. Brownlee said commanders want to continue that policy, though unpopular with some soldiers. But he has ordered the Army staff to draft plans for shorter tours if January elections and expanded Iraq security forces allow the Pentagon to reduce U.S. troops in the country. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JB Stone
Guest
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:34 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Yesterday morning he spotted a black-clad man with an AK47 assault rifle peering round a corner 450m from the villa where Cougar Company of the Seventh Cavalry has set up a forward base. He shot the man in the stomach: he fell, but kept crawling, so Sergeant Veen shot him again in the shoulder. Still the man tried to move away, so the sergeant blasted him with his 50 calibre machinegun.
"There's pretty much no feeling," explained the 24-year-old from Chicago
http://www.springfield-armory.com/images/wallpaper/800x600/12.jpg
| Quote: | 
U.S. Marines Lance Cpl. Ryan Chapman, from Lawrence, Kansas, a machine gunner of the 1st Battalion 3rd Marine Regiment, listens to a question during a news conference at the Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, southern Germany.
LANDSTUHL, Germany – Fallujah's masked fighters have been fighting house to house, firing from rooftops and mosques with a seemingly unending supply of firepower, wounded U.S. servicemen said Monday, recounting tough urban combat in the Iraqi insurgent stronghold.
"They were ready to fight to the death," Lance Cpl. Travis Schafer, a rifleman with a Marine battalion, told a news conference at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where he was being treated for a shrapnel wound in his right hand. A rocket-propelled grenade had exploded 15 yards to his right in a deserted marketplace.
"It's house-to-house fighting," he said. "Rooftop-to-rooftop."
About 70 wounded soldiers have been arriving daily at the military hospital in Germany since the week-old offensive in Fallujah began – about twice the normal number of casualties from Iraq.
The troops said the insurgents appeared well-organized and heavily armed.
"They had their own little plan of what they were going to do, a pretty set idea of where they were going to fight," said U.S. Army Spc. Kris Clinkscales, 22, of San Antonio, Texas, his right arm in a sling with shrapnel wounds.
Schafer, of Puyallup, Wash., was surprised by the fighters' firepower.
"It seemed like they have a pretty unlimited amount of RPGs and mortars. They seemed to fling those about wildly," he said.
Schafer, with the 1st Marine Regiment, said his unit had only pushed 400 yards into the city before it took heavy fire from small arms, mortars and RPGs.
"They were locking on us with RPGs and mortars from buildings all around us," the 20-year-old said. "Even from mosques they were firing – from all over the place."
Lance Cpl. Ryan Chapman with the 1st Marine Regiment, had an ugly scar over his left eye – a reminder of his encounter with a sniper.
As his unit came under sustained fire, Chapman had been tracking a sniper with the telescopic sight of his wire-guided missile launcher. But he was hit first, with bullet striking his forehead just below the edge of his helmet.
Chapman, 22, of Lawrence, Kansas, acknowledged he had been lucky, but he said he was eager to get back into action.
"It's nothing too serious. It cracked my skull, but I think it looks worse than it is," he said. "I want to go back – my buddies are out there."
He was among 419 patients admitted to Landstuhl in the last week, 233 of whom had combat-related injuries, according to doctors. The most common wounds have been from bullets or blast injuries from rocket-propelled grenades.
While most the recent casualties in Landstuhl are from Fallujah, officials do not have a precise breakdown.
Another 46 wounded troops from Iraq were en route to the hospital Monday, Landstuhl spokeswoman Marie Shaw said.
The offensive in Fallujah has killed at least 38 American troops and six Iraqi soldiers. The number of U.S. troops wounded is now 275, although more than 60 have returned to duty. U.S. officials estimated more than 1,200 insurgents have been killed. |
"It seemed like they have a pretty unlimited amount of RPGs and mortars. They seemed to fling those about wildly," he said.
| Quote: | 
"What you're seeing now are some of the hardliners, they seem to be better equipped than some of the earlier ones, we've seen flak jackets on some of them" - Major General Richard Natonski
Fallujah hardliners battle on
8.05PM, Mon Nov 15 2004
US warplanes continued to bomb rebel areas of Fallujah as troops hunted insurgents in the city, devastated by the seven-day onslaught.
The US military said it had taken control of Fallujah, but scattered resistance remained, particularly in southern parts of the city.
The US Marine general who commanded the fight to take Fallujah said those who remained were the rebel hardcore who would be killed. There was no aid crisis in the city, he said.
"What you're seeing now are some of the hardliners, they seem to be better equipped than some of the earlier ones, we've seen flak jackets on some of them," Major General Richard Natonski said.
"But we're more determined and we're going to wipe them out," he said.
While US forces have won a military victory, the process of rebuilding Fallujah, assisting about 150,000 residents who fled and preparing it for January elections could take months.
Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said he did not believe any civilians were killed in the offensive, which has left 38 US soldiers, 6 Iraqi troops and more than 1,200 insurgents dead. But witness accounts contradicted him.
"Some of the bodies we found had been eaten by stray dogs and cats. It was a very painful sight."
US forces said they had found a bunker with reinforced tunnels leading to stores of weapons, including an anti-aircraft artillery gun.
More than 10,000 US troops have been involved in the operation to take Fallujah from an estimated 2,000-3,000 rebels. |
| Quote: | Fallujah Rebels "Fighting to the Death"
"PA"
US soldiers battled insurgents northeast of Baghdad today in clashes that killed more than 50 people as American forces struggled to clear pockets of resistance inside Fallujah where some guerrillas were said to be “fighting to the death.”
At least five suicide bombers targeted American troops elsewhere in volatile Sunni Muslim areas north and west of the capital, injuring at least nine Americans. Three of the suicide attacks occurred simultaneously in three locations between Fallujah and the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, the US command said.
In a speech found on the internet today, a speaker said to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the country’s most feared terror leader, called on his followers to “shower” the Americans ”with rockets and mortars” because US forces were spread too thin as they seek to finish off Islam in Fallujah”.
The worst reported fighting took place about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad following assaults on police stations in Baqouba and its twin city Buhriz.
Gunmen abducted police Col Qassim Mohammed, took him to the Buhriz police station and threatened to kill him if police didn’t surrender the station. When police refused, the gunmen tied the colonel’s hands behind his back and shot him dead.
US and Iraqi troops rushed to the scene, setting off a gunbattle that killed 26 insurgents and five other Iraqi police, Iraqi officials said.
At the same time, insurgents attacked a police station in Baqouba and seized another building. US aircraft dropped two 500lb bombs before the end of the fighting, in which four American soldiers were wounded, the US command said.
During the fighting, US troops came under fire from a mosque. Iraqi security stormed the mosque and found rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and other weapons and ammunition, the statement said.
Three suicide car bombings targeted US forces in the insurgent zone between Fallujah and Ramadi, the US military said. In one, the bomber rammed into a Marine armoured vehicle, wounding the four troops inside. The two other bombings caused no injuries – including one in which the driver rammed his car into a tank but his explosives failed to explode.
Witnesses reported a fourth car bombing tonight in Ramadi against a US convoy but there was no report of casualties.
In Mosul, where an uprising broke out last week in support of the Fallujah defenders, a suicide driver tried to ram his bomb-laden vehicle into a US convoy, the military said. He missed but set off the explosives, wounding five soldiers, four of them slightly.
Four American soldiers were wounded when their patrol ran over a land mine near Beiji in northern Iraq, the military said.
During a press conference in Baghdad, Interior Minister Falah Hassan al-Naqib, himself a Sunni Muslim, condemned the growing attacks on Iraqi police and security forces, calling them part of a campaign “to divide this country and thrust it into a civil war.”
“They are trying by all means to divide this country and to create an ethnic and sectarian war,” al-Naqib said of the insurgents.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said police had arrested the leader of a militant group behind the killing of some foreign hostages. Moayad Ahmed Yasseen, leader of the group Muhammad’s Army, was captured along with some of his followers, Allawi said. He did not say what kidnappings the group has been involved in.
However, a statement by the prime minister’s office later described Muhammad’s Army as the “armed wing of an organisation created by Saddam Hussein” to fight for the return of the Baath party to power.
The rise in violence accompanied the American-led assault against Fallujah, the main rebel stronghold. The week-old offensive in Fallujah has left at least 38 American troops and six Iraqi soldiers dead.
The number of US troops wounded is now 320, though 134 have returned to duty. US officials estimated more than 1,200 insurgents have been killed.
In an interview with reporters at the Pentagon, Marine Col. Michael Regner, operations officer for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said US and Iraqi forces had captured more than 1,052 prisoners in Fallujah, most of them are Iraqis but some foreigners.
“Very few of them are giving up,” Regner said. “They’re fighting to the death.”
He said US troops and Marines were working their way back from the southern part of the city toward the northern part, clearing out pockets of resistance and recovering caches of weapons.
|
Drones pick off 'rats' of Fallujah
The Australian ^ | November 15 2004 | James Hider/The Times
Posted on 11/15/2004 12:42:21 PM PST by knighthawk
THE last hours of the mujaheddin are terrifying. With the city they once ruled with the absolute authority of medieval caliphs now overrun by US and Iraqi troops, they have to keep moving. To pause even for a few minutes can mean instant death from an unseen enemy.
A group of 15 fighters dressed in black and carrying an array of weapons ducked into a two-storey house in war-torn southern Fallujah. Their movement was picked up by an unmanned spy plane that beamed back live footage to a control centre on the edge of the city. Within minutes, an airstrike was called and the house disappeared in a giant plume of grey smoke.
From a house across the road, the explosion flushed out another group of guerillas. Deafened by the blast, they stumbled out into the street, formed a ragged line and started off on the marathon to postpone their deaths, the drone dogging their every step.
"The rats are trying to move about," said Major Tim Karcher, of the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, as the figures flitted from street to street, seeking cover close to walls.
Sometimes they can throw off the drone, ducking out of sight of the men with the power to summon FA18 fighter-bombers or 155mm artillery strikes. But they have no way of knowing. And, increasingly, as they run they come into the crosshairs of American snipers, crack shots such as Sergeant Marc Veen and his long-barrelled rifle, Lucille.
Yesterday morning he spotted a black-clad man with an AK47 assault rifle peering round a corner 450m from the villa where Cougar Company of the Seventh Cavalry has set up a forward base. He shot the man in the stomach: he fell, but kept crawling, so Sergeant Veen shot him again in the shoulder. Still the man tried to move away, so the sergeant blasted him with his 50 calibre machinegun.
"There's pretty much no feeling," explained the 24-year-old from Chicago, perched on the parapet of the house, the shell of the killer bullet tucked as a trophy into his flak jacket. "If I didn't get that guy, that guy would get one of my buddies sometime later down the line."
The battle for Fallujah is all but over. The main north-south road in the once-dreaded Jolan district is a US military highway, smothered in dust kicked up by troop carriers and giant bulldozers.
Almost every building is cracked, chipped or holed by the fighting. Any guerilla who could make his way back up from the last pockets of resistance in the south would see the mujaheddin graffiti -- "Jihad, jihad jihad, God is Greatest and Islam will win" -- replaced by slogans daubed by the US-backed Iraqi Army, posted along the length of the route. Standing on a street reeking of decomposed bodies, the ruins of a five-floor building silhouetted behind him, Lieutenant Fares Ahmed Hassan said the destroyed city would send a strong message to a nation where force has long been the lingua franca of government.
"When the people of Fallujah come back and see their houses, they will kick out any terrorists. This will be an example to all Iraqi cities," the Kurdish officer said.
Apart from a handful of women and children, the only civilians he had encountered were men of fighting age, about 500, detained for vetting. He said that some civilians had said insurgent snipers had shot anyone trying to leave their homes. As US troops sweep through the houses, they are unearthing the insurgents' horrifying secrets -- more akin to the handiwork of psychotic serial killers than guerillas or even terrorists -- that have shocked the world and explain why this devastating offensive has met with so little opposition from the Arab world. This included the disembowelled and limbless body of a blonde woman, possibly Pole Teresa Borcz, who was married to an Iraqi and abducted two weeks ago.
As the guerillas run their last sprint from death, sympathy for their cause among Iraqis is just as rapidly running out.
A group of 15 fighters dressed in black and carrying an array of weapons ducked into a two-storey house in war-torn southern Fallujah. Their movement was picked up by an unmanned spy plane that beamed back live footage to a control centre on the edge of the city. Within minutes, an airstrike was called and the house disappeared in a giant plume of grey smoke.
"The rats are trying to move about," said Major Tim Karcher, of the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry..., |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Navy_Navy_Navy
Admin
Joined: 07 May 2004
Posts: 5777
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:51 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Thanks for keeping all this news in one spot where it's easily found, JB. I appreciate it and I'm sure others do, too.
_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JB Stone
Guest
|
| Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2004 1:09 am Post subject: |
|
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
