Thwarted Ambush Was Highly Coordinated, U.S. Officials Say [NYT]
By DEXTER FILKINS and IAN FISHER
The negative slant of this surprises even me, 54 to zip is a good score. As I said of both Iraq wars and Afghanistan, "We covered the spread: it was a big spread, but we covered it."
Of course the body count is a legitimate question. My guess is that this had a lot to do with it:
"They set up ambush points, he said, on likely routes for the American soldiers, and stored explosives and bombs there. The guerrillas concealed themselves in cars in back alleys, using BMW sedans, taxis and pick-up trucks. Like the Americans, he said, the guerrillas had snipers on the roof-tops. "
They were extremely mobile, the chance for quick escape may have given them the confidence to take on armor [error!], and they may have left with many dead and wounded. And perhaps our people on the ground we're leaning toward a "maximum" count.
The action was reminiscent of the Fedayeen during the war. They're uneducated, criminal-class, owe everything to Saddam. They can fight fiercely but don't pick their spots well, often took on tanks unsuccessfully during the war.
Doc
Published: December 1, 2003
SAMARRA, Iraq, Dec. 1 — The American convoy that carries cash to two banks here had been attacked before, but this time the troops were ready: Along with the money, they rumbled into this hard-line Baathist city Sunday with tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and armored Humvees. They even put snipers on the roofs.
As if on cue, the guerrillas attacked, but according to American commanders, the Iraqis suffered a devastating defeat: A three-hour battle fought in the alleys and streets ended with what the military said were as many as 54 insurgents dead and only five Americans wounded.
On the streets of Samarra, it seemed, American commanders had finally gotten what they had long sought: a large number of Iraqi guerrillas drawn into the open, where American firepower could wipe them out.
"We didn't have the immediate intelligence that we knew it would happen, but we had to be prepared for it," Col. Fred Rudesheim, who oversees the city, told reporters today. "And our soldiers responded as they have been trained to, with the immediate action that they know to take."
But as local Iraqis today began dragging away the wreckage and counting their dead, it seemed clear that the guerrilla war being fought in the areas north and west of Baghdad had entered a new and more troubling phase. Urban warfare in Iraq seemed likely to raise many more questions, including, in this case, the murkiest: What happened to all the corpses?
While American commanders said the Iraqi body count came from precise reports filed immediately after a close-range battle, hospital officials said today that they could account for, at most, eight dead, and that most of those were civilians. This morning, only two bodies — a gray-bearded old man and a middle-aged women — lay on the bloody steel trays of the hospital morgue.
More broadly, the battle that unfolded Sunday afternoon underscored a dilemma that military officials here have been weighing for months: How to ratchet up the pressure on the insurgents, who are killing a growing number of Americans and Iraqis, without alienating the very people the Americans are trying to win over.
As they showed here on Sunday, American soldiers can be fast on their feet and deliver a crushing amount of firepower. But the use of overwhelming military force, so effective against the guerrillas, seemed to push many Iraqis away.
"If I had a gun, I would have attacked the Americans myself," said Satar Nasiaf, 47, a shopkeeper who said he watched two Iraqi civilians fall to American fire. "The Americans were shooting in every direction."
Adnan Sahib Dafar, 52, an ambulance driver, walked with anger in and out of the morgue, pointing to the dead woman who lay on the bloody steel tray. The woman, Mr. Dafar said, had been an employee at the city's big pharmaceutical factory when she was caught in the crossfire.
"Is this woman shooting a rocket-propelled grenade?" demanded Mr. Dafar, who said he saw only eight dead Iraqis. "Is she fighting?"
Colonel Rudesheim, saying he had not seen any reports of civilian dead, argued that battles like this one will win the support of ordinary Iraqis.
"Attacks, in our view, are attacks against freedom-loving Iraqis that want to move on with life, versus those that are trying to drag them back to something akin to the former regime," he said. "What we hear is that the people of Samarra are fed up."
The guerrilla war claimed another American life today, in another stronghold of Mr. Hussein. In Habbaniya, about 75 miles away, an American soldier was killed when his convoy came under attack. He was the 187th American soldier to die in Iraq since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq to be over.
An hour's drive north of Baghdad, Samarra is famous for its golden-domed mosque and a spiraling mud-brick minaret. Just down the road from Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, it has remained a stronghold for those fighting the American occupation.
Outside the hospital, a small crowd of Iraqis gathered around a bus they said had been destroyed in the fighting and began chanting an old refrain: "Our souls and our blood, we sacrifice to you, Saddam."
What Sunday's battle showed, with little doubt, is that United States forces are confronting an enemy that is increasingly sophisticated, carrying out bigger attacks — if fewer of them in recent weeks — involving more soldiers and greater levels of coordination and intelligence.
On Sunday, Colonel Rudesheim and other officials said, the attackers apparently knew the time that the American troops were planning to deliver the money to branches of the Rafidan Bank on the eastern and western edges of the city.
Capt. Andrew Deponai, one of the officers who coordinated the combat, said the attackers "split their force in half," with between 30 and 40 men positioned near each branch in "squad and team-sized elements so they could attack each bank from all sides."
They set up ambush points, he said, on likely routes for the American soldiers, and stored explosives and bombs there. The guerrillas concealed themselves in cars in back alleys, using BMW sedans, taxis and pick-up trucks. Like the Americans, he said, the guerrillas had snipers on the roof-tops.
It was, he said, "a well-planned attack."
American commanders said both the Iraqi squads attacked first with guns, then with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. There was much evidence of the combat here today, with walls and houses across the city pocked with bullet-holes.
"If you visit any house in Samarra," complained Ibrahim Khalil Ibrahim, a Samarra resident, "you will find shrapnel."
nytimes.com |
