Amen. Prayers answered as we experience Holy Week.
Seven Missing American Troops Rescued
washingtonpost.com
By Peter Baker and Terry M. Neal
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 13, 2003; 10:57 AM
U.S. Marines advancing toward the ancestral hometown of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein today rescued seven American soldiers being held captive by Iraqi forces north of Baghdad, Marine officers said.
The rescued prisoners, who were described as U.S. Army soldiers but not officially identified, were reported in good condition, although two had suffered gunshot wounds, the officers said. The soldiers were flown to a military medical facility near Baghdad.
The Marines discovered the prisoners near the town of Samarrah, about 70 miles north of Baghdad, while moving up the highway toward Tikrit. As the Marines' Task Force Tripoli approached Samarrah, forces still loyal to Hussein fled the building where the Americans were being held.
"The guards evidently were deserted by their officers, and the guards themselves brought the prisoners of war to the Marines," said Lt. Col. Nick Morano, senior watch commander at Marine headquarters southeast of Baghdad. "All the soldiers are in good condition. A couple of them have wounds, but they're okay."
Seven Army soldiers have been listed as missing since March 23 and 24. Two Army servicemen were believed captured early in the morning of March 24 when their AH-64A Apache Longbow attack helicopter was shot down by Iraqis during a predawn airstrike near Najaf. Relatives interviewed on CNN identified the two crew members of the downed Apache, Chief Warrant Officer David S. Williams, 30, and Chief Warrant Officer Ronald D. Young, 26, from CNN footage of the prisoners boarding a plane today after their rescue.
And the other five were part of the 507th Maintenance Company convoy that was ambushed in the southern city of Nasiriyah on March 23. They are Spc. Edgar Adan Hernandez, 21, Mission, Texas; Spc. Joseph Neal Hudson, 23, Alamogordo, N.M.; Spc. Shoshana N. Johnson, 30, El Paso, Texas; Pfc. Patrick Wayne Miller, 23, Walter, Kansas; Sgt. James J. Riley, 31, Pennsauken, N.J. The Hudson, Johnson, Miller and Riley families confirmed that they were among the rescued soldiers.
Another soldier taken prisoner during that ambush, Pfc. Jessica Lynch, was rescued during a subsequent commando raid in Nasiriyah. In addition, five Marines and one Army soldier are listed as missing in action. All have been missing since March 23.
Twenty-five days into the war, Tikrit is the last city of any size suspected of harboring Hussein loyalists, although U.S. military officers say the numbers involved and their readiness to fight are uncertain.
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. Central Command, said this morning in an interview on CNN that "we have American forces in Tikrit right now. When last I checked this force was moving on Tikrit and there was not any resistance. I think we would be premature to say well, gosh, it's all done, it's all finished."
Franks also said this morning on CNN that the U.S. has samples of Hussein's DNA for potential use in the ongoing effort to determine if he is alive or dead.
"He's either dead or running a lot," Franks said, adding that "the appropriate persons are doing forensic tests" at sites where the U.S. military has attempted to kill Hussein with bombs.
Tikrit, which is about 110 miles north of Baghdad, is Hussein's hometown, and Tikritis form the backbone of his most loyal military forces.
Before the Marines' arrival, live footage aired by CNN showed no signs of active Iraqi defenses on Tikrit's northern outskirts and suggested that intensive U.S. airstrikes had taken a heavy toll on the desert city's military forces.
However, CNN vehicles came under small-arms fire as they tried to enter the city center. A CNN security guard returned fire at least twice, and the news crew quickly drove away.
Two members of the CNN party were slightly injured, according to Eli Flournoy, CNN's senior international assignment editor. He said an Iraqi Kurd serving as a security guard was grazed by a bullet, and a CNN producer was hit by shattered glass.
The Marine task force had been moving north to join in an effort to squeeze and eventually eliminate the last vestiges of Hussein's once-powerful Baath Party government, U.S. officials said. A U.S. Central Command spokesman said Saturday that the Marines would "commence ground operations [against] suspected Iraqi military strongholds" north of Baghdad, and officials in Washington made it clear the target was the Tikrit region, about 90 miles north of the capital. The task force commander, Brig. Gen. John Kelly, was quoted as saying he was "moving northward out of Baghdad" and would give a chance to "anyone who wants to surrender" instead of being destroyed.
With fighting winding down elsewhere in Iraq, U.S. forces moved this weekend to stabilize the war-torn country, which has been beset by looting and lawlessness in recent days. Several news wire reports indicated that while some sense of normalcy returned to parts of Baghdad on Sunday, there continued to be looting in some parts of the city.
The Associated Press reported that a team of 32 U.S. Army engineers flew into Baghdad on Sunday to help restore electricity. Another project is to establish joint patrols by U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police, aimed at curbing the rampant looting that has wracked Baghdad, Mosul and other cities.
In Baghdad, the looting spread Sunday to a vast stretch of army barracks and warehouses on the western outskirts. Looters using trucks and horse-drawn carts stole toilets, bathtubs, sinks and construction materials from one of the largest warehouses. Nearer the city center, an institute of military studies was looted and gutted by fire.
U.S. Army troops guarded banks and hospitals, shops began to open, and hundreds of cars loaded with personal belonging entered from the west, a sign that people who fled the fighting were coming home. And while some buses were running, some double-decker buses had been commandeered by looters to ferry their plunder back home.
Marines were fanning through neighborhoods of northeast Baghdad, finding large caches of weapons and ammunition in schools, in parked trucks, even in open fields where children play.
The State Department announced it will send two dozen police officers and other law enforcement officials as a down payment for a force of nearly 1,200 to help organize an Iraqi police system to restore order. Getting a jump on the process, police officers in Baghdad met with U.S. military officers in an effort to organize redeployment of normal Iraqi police forces untainted by association with the abuses of Hussein's three-decade rule.
Col. Mohammed Zaki, an Iraqi police officer, told reporters that U.S. Marines and Iraqi police will begin joint patrols within a few days in the capital. Marine civil affairs officers agreed that joint patrols would be a good idea, but they did not predict when they could start.
Maj. Frank Simone, one of the civil affairs officers, told the Associated Press that the difficulty lies in distinguishing between police officers who could present a danger to U.S. forces -- by informing on them to die-hard Hussein loyalists -- and others who could be useful in meeting residents' pleas for increased security and a resumption of municipal functions.
"Most of the top people, the ones we think are Baath officials, the ones that fled, are guys that we don't want to come back," he said. "But a lot of the ones that stayed are good guys."
Despite the cries for a return to normalcy, an Army unit reported a sharp clash with Iraqi irregulars in the western part of Baghdad, in which officers said about 20 Iraqi militiamen were killed and no U.S. soldiers were lost. But a Marine guarding a hospital on the eastern side of the Tigris River was shot and killed when two Syrian men posing as gardeners sneaked up, pulled out a concealed gun and opened fire at point-blank range. Other Marines at the checkpoint returned fire, killing one of the assailants and injuring the other, officers reported.
At another checkpoint, Marines fired at a vehicle that ignored repeated signals to stop, killing one occupant and injuring another, officers here at headquarters said. Because of several suicide bombings, soldiers and Marines have received orders to be extremely vigilant against oncoming Iraqi vehicles.
U.S. military officers said troops in the arid western stretches of Iraq stopped a bus apparently heading for Syria and found 59 men carrying $630,000 and letters promising rewards for those who killed U.S. soldiers. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, briefing reporters at the Central Command's regional headquarters in Doha, Qatar, said the money was in $100 bills but the nationality of the men and the source of the letters were unclear.
Officials voiced suspicion that the 59 were among several thousand non-Iraqi Arabs who volunteered to come to Iraq and help Hussein's forces defend against the U.S.-British invasion. U.S. officers have reported encountering non-Iraqi fighters for the last several days in Baghdad.
U.S. officials in Washington have accused the Syrian government of permitting the Arab volunteers to enter Iraq through Syria and of aiding Hussein's forces by shipping night-vision goggles to them. But Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa disputed those charges Saturday, describing them as "baseless allegations."
Marines said some of their troops searching an elementary school in an affluent neighborhood near the center of Baghdad found more than 150 garments lined with explosives that they believe were designed to be worn by suicide bombers. The vests were scattered on the floor of a classroom, still wrapped in plastic and on hangers, according to Capt. Tom Lacroix, commander of Charlie Company in the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.
Marine explosives experts described three types of garments: black leather vests lined with vertical ribs made of explosives, bibs filled with explosives and hundreds of steel balls that would serve as shrapnel when the bib was detonated, and wide belts packed with explosives.
Some of the devices were equipped with a hand-operated trigger mechanism, while others were rigged with mercury that would cause them to be detonated when the wearer raised his or her arms. Each came with an instruction card, printed in Arabic, and were marked "Made especially for Saddam's Fedayeen."
Staff writer Jonathan Finer in Baghdad contributed to this report. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. |
