Fallujah I - a mainstream current events report
U.S. Recaptures Kut, Prepares to Resume Fighting in Fallujah
Pamela Constable, Sewell Chan and William Branigin
U.S. forces, battling separate Iraqi rebellions on the first anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein, recaptured most of the key southern city of Kut from Shiite militiamen and skirmished with Sunni Muslim insurgents in Fallujah Friday as Marines prepared an operation to regain control of this hotbed of resistance activity.
After five days of intense fighting in Fallujah, a predominantly Sunni bastion of support for Hussein, U.S. authorities announced a temporary suspension of offensive operations Friday for humanitarian reasons. But the lull was interrupted by bursts of shooting as insurgents braced for an assault, and Marines were given permission to open fire on their attackers.
After nightfall, an AC-130 gunship struck targets in the city, the Associated Press reported.
U.S. Marines in the densely packed city allowed women and children, but not young men, to make an exodus from Fallujah, where Marines have used air strikes and heavy ground fire against entrenched insurgents armed with automatic weapons, mortars and rocket propelled grenades.
The Marines also were permitting food and medicine to enter Fallujah. Negotiations aimed at possibly stopping the fighting were underway among insurgents, members of the Iraqi governing council and local leaders.
Fallujah residents carried their dead to a soccer field for burial Friday, since they were unable to reach cemeteries on the outskirts because of the siege, AP reported. There was no word on how many people were buried or whether they were fighters or civilians. Fallujah residents, many of whom are hostile to the U.S. occupation, have reported hundreds of people killed in the latest fighting, but their claims have been impossible to confirm.
In Baghdad, the U.S. military Friday reported the deaths of two Army soldiers and three Marines in the last two days. It said one 1st Cavalry Division soldier was killed and another wounded Friday in a "coordinated attack" involving a roadside bomb followed by small-arms fire near Camp Cooke, a U.S. base north of Baghdad.
A soldier from the 13th Corps Support Command and a civilian truck driver also were killed in an attack on their convoy near Baghdad International airport, the military said. Twelve people were reported wounded in that attack, but it was not immediately clear whether they were soldiers or civilians.
In addition, three members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were killed Thursday in fighting in Anbar Province, the area west of Baghdad that includes Fallujah, the military said Friday. No other details were available.
Iraqi insurgents, meanwhile, claimed to have seized six foreigners -- four Italians and two Americans -- on a road on the western edge of the capital, but there was no immediate confirmation of the kidnapping. The Italian Foreign Ministry said all registered Italian civilians and soldiers in Iraq were accounted for.
In southern Iraq, U.S. troops entered the city of Kut early Friday and drove out members of the Mahdi Army, a militia led by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, the Associated Press reported. A U.S. helicopter struck Sadr's office in Kut, killing two people, and Americans were patrolling the streets, the agency said. Sadr's followers had seized the city after Ukrainian troops, members of a U.S.-led coalition, withdrew.
Sadr, in a sermon delivered by one of his deputies in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, said U.S. forces now face a "civil revolt" in Iraq and should pull out of the country.
Directing his comments to President Bush, Sadr said the U.S. war against Hussein's government was a thing of the past and that "now you are fighting the entire Iraqi people," the AP reported. Sadr, 30, is the son of a prominent Shiite cleric who was assassinated in 1999 by suspected agents of Hussein.
U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt described Iraq as somewhat calmer Friday than it has most of the week.
Italian troops, he said, were still fighting Sadr's Mahdi Army in the southern city of Nasiriyah. Najaf and Karbala, also in the south, remained partially under insurgent control, but Kimmitt said occupation troops were remaining outside those towns in an effort to avoid conflict as Shiites begin observances of the religious holiday of Arbaeen.
As Kimmitt spoke, an explosion, apparently from a mortar round, shook the Sheraton Hotel, where reporters and contractors stay. No one was reported injured.
Fallujah, about 35 miles west of Baghdad on the main road to Jordan, was a no-go area for U.S. troops until March 31, when mobs attacked and killed four American civilian security contractors in the center of town. The Marines went in Monday and met heavy resistance. Five Marines have been killed so far in the Fallujah battle.
The intensity of the U.S. operation in Fallujah prompted one of the most pro-American members of the U.S.-picked governing council, Adnan Pachachi, to condemn the U.S. assault on the city, which for some Iraqis has become a symbol of resistance.
"These operations were a mass punishment for the people of Fallujah," Pachachi told the al-Arabiya satellite television network. "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal."
L. Paul Bremer, head of the U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq, announced the "suspension of offensive operations" in Fallujah Friday morning, saying that it was designed to allow local residents to tend to the dead and wounded and to receive food and medicine as talks get underway.
On the ground in Fallujah, Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, the commander of the U.S. Marine unit, told reporters that offensive operations were being suspended to allow women and children -- and men too old to fight -- to leave the battered city en masse in response to pleas from city religious leaders.
"We are simply affording them the chance to leave the city," he said, reporting that vehicles carrying civilians were already moving onto the highways leading out of town.
The suspension seemed shaky and some fighting was taking place 90 minutes after it was announced.
In Baghdad, coalition troops locked down the center of the city one year to the day after the toppling of the statue of former president Saddam Hussein. No reason was given. But authorities have expressed concern about the possibility of insurgent attacks timed with the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. They are also worried about the potential for violence coordinated with the beginning of Arbaeen among Shiite Muslims.
Traffic of any kind was barred from the area near the statue and loudspeakers warned that anyone wielding a weapon in the area would be shot.
Bremer also announced Friday the appointments of two Iraqis to high level posts. Samir Shakir Mahmoud will be the new minister of Interior, in charge of Iraqi security and police forces, while Mouwafak Rabii was named national security adviser. Both are members of the U.S. appointed Iraqi governing council, from which they will now step down. Iraq's interim interior minister suddenly resigned Thursday, apparently under pressure from Bremer.
washingtonpost.com
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