Are we getting ready to invade Syria?
U.S. and Iraqi Troops Battle Along Syrian Border
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 7, 2005; 5:20 PM
BAGHDAD, Nov. 7 -- U.S. and Iraqi troops continued to battle house-to-house and street-to-street in the border town of Husaybah Monday in a new campaign to clear out al Qaeda safe houses and insurgents and stop the flow of foreign arms and fighters from Syria into Iraq, the U.S. military said.
Troops "continue to be attacked by small groups of terrorists," the military said, adding that there had been four incidents of insurgents attacking U.S. Marines and Iraqi troops from inside mosques, and one attack from inside a school.
The U.S. military reported Monday that a Marine was killed by small arms fire on Sunday -- the first U.S. fatality of the three-day-old offensive, named Operation Steel Curtain -- and that nine American troops have been injured. About 40 insurgents have been confirmed killed, the military statement said.
Khaleel Dulaimi, an official with the Red Crescent Society, said 29 civilians had been killed in the fighting near the border with Syria. Dulaimi was interviewed at a refugee camp east of the city of Qaim, which is about 10 miles from Husaybah and has also been targeted in the offensive.
Majbil Ahmad Mihalawi, an official with the Qaim Municipality, said 76 houses and four schools had been destroyed and two mosques had been severely damaged. Water, sewer and electric systems also suffered major damage, he said.
The U.S. military statement said it knew of no civilian casualties.
"Terrorists are using sensitive and critical infrastructure as protection from Coalition and Iraqi Army counterattacks," the military said. Marines had the right to defend themselves and were using "proportionate force in responding to attacks" while respecting "the sanctity of the mosques," the statement said, adding that no air strike had been conducted against any mosque.
In separate violence Monday, four soldiers died when a suicide car bomber attacked their checkpoint on a road south of Baghdad, and another soldier was killed by a roadside bomb late Sunday near the town of Ad Dawr, about 85 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in statements.
Six people were killed and nine were wounded in a five-mortar attack on civilian houses near Iraq's Ministry of Youth and Sports in the Mustansiriya neighborhood of eastern Baghdad, according to city police Gen. Salman Shammari. And at least nine people, including six Iraqi policemen, were killed in a suicide car bombing in the Dora neighborhood of southern Baghdad, news services reported.
Meanwhile, the military said in a statement Monday night that five U.S. soldiers from the 75th Ranger Regiment, a special operations unit, were charged Saturday with abusing three prisoners as they were being moved to a Baghdad detention facility Sept. 7. The soldiers were charged with violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for allegedly punching and kicking the prisoners, the statement said. No further details were available.Senior U.S. military officials said the new offensive in western Iraq, centered around a border crossing with Syria about 200 miles west of Baghdad, has multiple aims -- primarily reestablishing Iraqi control of the border and stopping the flow of foreign fighters, weapons and money into Iraq. Other goals include destroying al Qaeda safe houses in the area, killing or capturing the group's leaders, and disrupting the organization's command and control capabilities in Anbar province west of the capital.
"What we saw developing over time was that the terrorist and foreign fighters were using villages and towns in al-Anbar as safe havens -- that's where they were stockpiling munitions, that's where they were involved in building their bombs, that's where they were conducting their training," Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a senior U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said in an interview.
U.S. warplanes conducted nine air strikes Saturday and 10 Sunday "using precision-guided munitions to ensure destruction of the target while limiting collateral damage," according to a military statement. In the eight days preceding the offensive, U.S. air strikes destroyed at least 11 al Qaeda safe houses in and around Husaybah, killing at least nine of the group's top local leaders and more than a dozen other members of the group, according to the U.S. military. Elsewhere in Iraq, three armed men entered an Internet cafe in the northern town of Mosul Monday and assassinated Ahmed Hussein Maliki, the No. 2 editor of Tall Afar Today newspaper, according to an employee of the paper, who asked not to be named because of security concerns. He said the paper recently moved its offices from Tall Afar to Mosul because of threats against the staff.
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