Fighting spreads to more towns as Falluja operation continues
Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Tuesday November 16, 2004
The Guardian
US troops called in air strikes on the Iraqi city of Baquba
yesterday as they fought gun battles in the street with crowds of
insurgents.
Fallout from the week-long assault on the city of Falluja spread
in several towns across the country.
As well as the fighting in Baquba, a mixed Sunni and Shia town
north of Baghdad, there were clashes in Baghdad, Ramadi,
Buhriz, Mosul and Suwayra.
In a blow against the insurgency, the Iraqi prime minister, Ayad
Allawi, said members of a militant group known as Jaish
Muhammad (the Army of Muhammad), including its leader, had
been arrested during the assault on Falluja.
The group is one of around a dozen insurgent organisations
responsible for kidnappings and attacks on the US military and
Iraqi security forces.
Fighting in Baquba began early yesterday when fighters armed
with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked
soldiers from the US 1st Infantry Division near a police station.
The soldiers then came under fire from a nearby mosque. Iraqi
forces stormed the mosque and found rocket-propelled
grenades, mortars and other weapons.
US troops then called in air strikes and two 500lb bombs were
dropped on "anti-Iraqi forces' positions", the military said.
Officials at the main police station in Baquba said 26 insurgents
and five Iraqi police had been killed in the fighting.
One Iraqi policeman and seven civilians died, a hospital official
said. Four American soldiers were injured.
In Buhriz at the same time, an attack on a police station killed
the town's police chief.
In Falluja, US troops continued to fight insurgents in the south of
the city. There were heavy bombing raids and artillery fire, with
aircraft making up to 30 bombing runs.
Colonel Michael Regner, operations officer for the 1st Marine
Expeditionary Force in Falluja, said at least 1,052 insurgents
had been taken prisoner during the assault, and more than
1,000 killed. No more than about two dozen were from outside
Iraq, he said.
The military previously estimated about 500 insurgents had been
taken prisoner.
Col Regner added that 38 US troops had been killed and 320
wounded in the operation.
"Falluja is no more a safe haven for the terrorists and killers.
This thing is over," the interior minister, Falah Hassan al-Naqib,
said in Baghdad.
Col Regner said some insurgents may have sought refuge in
Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, where there was heavy
fighting yesterday, and two car bombs detonated near a US
convoy.
Further north, in Mosul, which has seen serious violence in the
past week, five American soldiers were injured when a suicide
bomber detonated his car near a US military convoy.
"I expect the next few days will bring some hard fighting," the
US commander in the city, Brigadier General Carter Ham, said.
In Suwayra, south of Baghdad, two policemen and five National
Guardsmen were killed.
In an audiotape on an Islamist website, Jordanian terror leader
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said the Americans were avoiding attacks
against some rebel strongholds while fighting in Falluja.
"The enemy is now avoiding fighting you for fear of dispersion
and attrition," the speaker said. "It has massed its capabilities
... to finish off Islam in Falluja. If it finishes Falluja, it will move in
your direction. Beware and deny it the chance to carry out this
plan."
He said that the Americans were overextended and "cannot
expand" their operations. "Shower them with rockets and
mortars and cut all the supply routes," he said.
· The Hungarian parliament yesterday rejected a government
proposal to extend the stay of 300 non-combat troops in Iraq by
three months until March 31 next year.
guardian.co.uk
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