Troops Kill 11 Saddam Protesters in Firefight
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq — American troops who came under attack killed 11 assailants in a town north of Baghdad, the military said Tuesday, a day after U.S. commanders said Saddam Hussein was providing useful insights into Iraq's escalating insurgency.
In Saddam's hometown of Tikrit (search), a roadside bomb injured three soldiers on Tuesday.
Gunmen ambushed a U.S. patrol Monday afternoon in the town of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, a military statement said. The attackers used automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades but caused neither casualties nor damage to the patrol which called in reinforcements, the statement said.
A company commander on the scene said 11 insurgents were killed in the ensuing firefight.
Samarra, a volatile town in the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad, was the scene of clashes between U.S. troops and insurgents last month. U.S. commanders initially claimed to have killed 54 guerrillas, but local residents and police reported that less than 10 people -- most of them civilians -- died in the firefight.
In Tikrit, U.S. officers said three soldiers were wounded on Tuesday by a roadside bomb. Two were said to have sustained serious injuries.
Meanwhile, a military statement said that soldiers in the town of Ramadi west of Baghdad killed three protesters and wounded two more on Monday, after up to 750 people rallied in a show of support for Saddam.
The statement said that U.S. troops were fired upon repeatedly and that one soldier was wounded.
Pro-Saddam demonstrations have been held in several Iraqi towns, casting doubts on claims by the U.S.-led coalition that the people of Iraq universally welcomed his arrest.
A military said Tuesday that a U.S. soldier died when he fell out of the vehicle he was riding north of Baghdad. It did not provide further details on the incident.
American officials said interrogations of Saddam, whose current location was unknown, will focus first on getting intelligence on the insurgency.
The U.S. military said it expected the ousted leader will clarify accusations that his armed forces had large arsenals of banned chemical, biological weapons and ballistic missiles, as well as an active program aimed at producing nuclear weapons. Those allegations were the main rationale for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but no weapons have been found almost nine months later.
Since Saddam's capture, U.S. Army teams from the 1st Armored Division have captured one high-ranking former regime figure -- who has yet to be named -- and that prisoner has given up a few others, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling said Monday.
The intelligence that led the military to the men came from the first transcript of Saddam's initial interrogation, and a briefcase of documents Saddam carried with him at the time of his arrest, Hertling said.
"We've already gleaned intelligence value from his capture," he said.
U.S. commanders have predicted that the guerrillas may be spurred to fight even harder in the short term, perhaps only to prove that Saddam meant little to them.
"Even if the head of the snake is cut off, the rest of the snake continues to move for a while," Hertling said. "There may be an increasing desire to execute attacks."
In Tikrit, about 700 people rallied in the center of town Monday chanting "Saddam is in our hearts, Saddam is in our blood." U.S. soldiers and Iraqi policemen yelled back: "Saddam is in our jail."
In Fallujah, another hotspot of anti-American resistance west of Baghdad, crowds roamed the streets shouting pro-Saddam slogans such as "We defend Saddam with our souls," after the Iraqi police withdrew from the streets, the crowd overran the mayor's office, a military statement said.
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