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November 10th,
2004 - U.S. Forces Battle Into Heart of Fallujah News article from the Washington
Post |
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U.S. Forces Battle Into
Heart of Fallujah Units Meet Scattered Resistance; Attacks Continue Elsewhere By Jackie Spinner, Karl Vick & Omar Fekeiki Washington Post November 10, 2004 Near Fallujah, Iraq, Nov. 9 -
U.S. forces pushed into the heart of Fallujah on Tuesday, encountering
roadside bombs, rockets and gunfire on the second day of a battle to wrest
control of the city from insurgents. Army and Marine units that
entered Fallujah from the northeast and northwest on Monday night had fought
their way to the city center and beyond by Tuesday night, U.S. commanders
said. Soldiers with the Army's 1st
Infantry Division made their way to the southeastern part of the city, a
neighborhood of factories and warehouses where they expected to find
guerrillas waiting for them. Instead, the district was relatively quiet,
though the units reported being fired on by women and children armed with
assault rifles. "There were multiple
groups running around shooting at us," said Air Force Senior Airman
Michael Smyre, 26, of Hickory, N.C., an airstrike spotter attached to the 1st
Infantry who was wounded when a rocket hit his armored vehicle. "You
could see a lot of rubble, trash everywhere. It was real nasty-looking." Marines fighting to the west
of the Army units advanced to the main east-west highway that divides
Fallujah and reported persistent resistance from insurgents firing from
mosques. The U.S. military said 10
troops and two members of Iraq's security forces were killed in the first two
days of the battle, the largest military operation since the U.S.-led
invasion last year. U.S. and Iraqi leaders hope the assault will break the
grip of insurgents who have held Fallujah for nearly seven months. Some Iraqi political and
religious groups condemned the push into Fallujah, a stronghold of the Sunni
Muslim minority. A leading Sunni organization, the Iraqi Islamic Party, quit
the country's interim government, and Sunni clerics on Tuesday made good on
threats to call for a boycott of January elections. Harith Dhari, head of the
pro-insurgency Association of Muslim Scholars, said balloting would occur
"over the corpses of those killed in Fallujah." Insurgents elsewhere in
Iraq, meanwhile, continued a strategy of mounting attacks. In Baqubah, a
restive city northeast of Baghdad, armed bands attacked two police stations.
Police officials and the U.S. military said the attacks were beaten back. A car
bomb at an Iraqi National Guard camp outside the northern city of Kirkuk
killed three people and wounded two. And two U.S. service members were killed
in a mortar attack on a base in Mosul, also in the north. In Baghdad, where insurgents
on Monday night detonated a car bomb outside a hospital treating victims of
two car bombs outside churches, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi imposed a
curfew from 10:30 p.m. to 4 a.m. U.S. fighter jets made low passes over the
capital, a show of strength rarely seen since the 2003 invasion. At a news conference in
Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the commander of foreign military operations
in Iraq, said the assault on Fallujah had so far "achieved our
objectives on or ahead of schedule." He added, "I think we're
looking at several more days of tough urban fighting." The general said the battle
plan as a whole was on course. "We felt like the enemy would form an
outer crust in defense of Fallujah. We broke through that pretty quickly and
easily," Metz said. "We also then anticipated him breaking up into
small three- to six-person detachments or squads, which we've seen throughout
the day, today especially." Witnesses said that by
Tuesday night, U.S. and Iraqi forces controlled the Jolan, Mualimeen and
Askali neighborhoods in the north of Fallujah. They also held the Rawdha
Muhammediya mosque, headquarters of the insurgent fighters and the mujaheddin
shura, the city's self-appointed government. The assault pushed
insurgents into Shuhada and other neighborhoods in the southernmost part of
the city, where they are fighting and hiding behind buildings and houses,
witnesses said. Metz said that because U.S.
forces formed a "very tight" cordon around the city Sunday night,
the enemy "doesn't have an escape route" and eventually would be
cornered. But Sheik Abdul-Sattar
Edatha, the spokesman for the shura council, said most foreign fighters had
already left the city. The U.S. military had estimated that there were 2,000
to 3,000 foreign fighters in the city, many of them part of a network linked
to Jordanian-born guerrilla leader Abu Musab Zarqawi. "Militarily speaking,
the city falls under the U.S. forces' control," Edatha said. "The
foreign fighters won't stay here and die. They lost the battle. They spread
in other places." On Tuesday night, Fallujah's
eerily empty streets were littered with shattered concrete and dead bodies,
said a resident shaken by a missile strike on the second story of his family
home. Insurgents cloaked in checkered head scarves carried wounded fellow
fighters to mosques. Civilians caught in the
crossfire were gathered in a hospital donated by the United Arab Emirates and
flying a blue and white UNICEF banner. There, medical workers low on bandages
and antiseptic bound wounds in ripped sheets and cleaned torn skin with hot
water. The Jolan and Askali
neighborhoods seemed particularly hard hit, with more than half of the houses
destroyed. Dead bodies were scattered on the streets and narrow alleys of
Jolan, one of Fallujah's oldest neighborhoods. Blood and flesh were
splattered on the walls of some of the houses, witnesses said, and the
streets were full of holes. Some of the heaviest damage
apparently was incurred Monday night from air and artillery attacks that
coincided with the entry of ground troops into the city. U.S. warplanes
dropped eight 2,000-pound bombs on the city overnight, and artillery boomed
throughout the night and into the morning. "Usually we keep the
gloves on," said Army Capt. Erik Krivda, of Gaithersburg, the senior
officer in charge of the 1st Infantry Division's Task Force 2-2 tactical
operations command center. "For this operation, we took the gloves
off." Some artillery guns fired
white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be
extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance
that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns. Kamal Hadeethi, a physician
at a regional hospital, said, "The corpses of the mujaheddin which we
received were burned, and some corpses were melted." In addition to ripping open
entire neighborhoods, the armor assault also brought into the open an
insurgent command that until this week remained shadowy even to Fallujah
residents. Ex-generals from the former Iraqi army's Republican Guard passed
written orders, complete with official stamp, to subordinates who snapped
salutes, witnesses said. Iraq's new army, formed
after occupation authorities dismantled the armed forces that had served
during the rule of Saddam Hussein, is taking part in the fight against
insurgents in Fallujah, primarily as a rear element to help clear areas once
U.S. forces have moved through. Marine commanders have declined to comment on
the offensive, deferring to Iraqi officers. On Tuesday, Brig. Gen.
Abdul-Qadir Muhammed Jasim characterized the offensive as "a holy task
to fight for Fallujah people." "We will fight to the
last drop of our blood to free our people," he said at a news conference
just outside the city. "We will fulfill the tasks we've been asked to
do, with the cooperation of our friends." Jasim said that resistance
had been lighter than expected and that the Iraqi soldiers were in good
spirits and eager to finish the operation. "The operation is going
very precise and with a very small number of casualties," he said.
"In every place we finish an operation, our forces start to distribute
aid, food, clothes, blankets and even money. … We are very sure that we are
moving in the right way and will do the tasks we are asked to do very
precisely." Metz repeatedly praised
Iraqi forces, saying they had "acquitted themselves very well in this
fight." Metz said the Iraqi soldiers had been used especially to search
the city's 77 mosques. "In several mosques today, lots of munitions and
weapons were found, and they were found by those Iraqi soldiers," he
said. Metz's account suggested a
marked improvement among the Iraqi troops in recent months. In April, the
last time U.S. commanders tried to use Iraqi forces in Fallujah, a battalion
of freshly trained Iraqi troops refused to go. A senior Iraqi official said
it was too early to tell how the Iraqi forces performed. "During the
operation you always hear they're doing good," said Industry Minister
Hachim Hasani. "After the operations are finished, we'll find out." Hasani's political
organization, the Iraqi Islamic Party, quit the interim government Tuesday to
protest the Fallujah offensive. But Hasani, who opposed the U.S. Marine siege
of the city earlier this year, quit the party Tuesday and retained his
cabinet post. "Iraq is larger than any party," Hasani said.
"Things should be done through the government, not outside the
government." Vick and special
correspondent Bassam Sebti reported from Baghdad. © 2004 The Washington Post
Company External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35979-2004Nov9_2.html |