Posted on 11/13/2004 8:46:42 AM PST by TexKat
CALLAWAY: On the phone with us now, we have CNN's Jane Arraf, who is embedded with troops near Falluja.
Jane -- good morning to you.
And what is the situation there?
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.
The situation is they're closing in on what military commanders believe might be the last pockets of organized insurgents. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't more insurgents out there. There are, and they keep popping up. But here in the southeast corner of town, they have been dropping 500 pound laser guided bombs on a series of spider holes, hiding places of insurgents that they've been finding.
They've also been finding tunnels, bunkers, landmines, homemade bombs and a variety of defensive positions and defensive strategies as they move through these streets. So far in the last couple of hours, they believe that they have killed about 20 suspected insurgents in the latest fight and they say they believe that this is where insurgents have been channeled from other parts of the city. This is, perhaps, the last stand, they hope, of organized insurgents.
CALLAWAY: Jane, we're hearing numbers from 600 to 1,000 insurgents who have been killed in this battle.
What are you hearing from the field there?
ARRAF: That would fit. We're with an Army unit that is essentially paving the way with its heavy armor and other assets for infantrymen from the Marines and other units to follow. They have been, their casualty count has been quite high. They've been using a variety of things, as I've mentioned. When you drop a laser guided bomb on a bunker, you're bound to kill quite a lot of people. So they have actually been keeping quite a high, relatively high count.
We have to point out that we are in an area of town which has been an insurgent stronghold. Here it is thought to be a particular stronghold of the Zarqawi network. And it has long ago been cleared of civilians. Not a single civilian in sight in this part of town.
CALLAWAY: Do the troops feel as if they've turned a corner yet in this operation into taking full control of Falluja?
ARRAF: Not full control. Certainly they believe they have control of most of it and that they're rapidly continuing to take control of the remaining parts. Full control in the sense that they have control of major sectors. But what they still have to do and what they will continue to do for some time to come is that street by street, building by building process.
Now, they've been doing some of that here, the Army unit task force from the 1st Infantry Division. And we were taken into a house earlier this morning where they had found a vehicle mounted with a machine gun, rocket propelled grenades. As we walked into the house, there were two suspected gunmen lying on the floor.
CALLAWAY: Wow!
ARRAF: That's the kind of thing they've been doing, going house to house.
CALLAWAY: All right, Jane Arraf somewhere near Falluja.
Thank you, Jane, for that report.
Thanks MeekOneGOP.
Good one inpajamas.
You bet. :^D
Vetronics of the Future Combat System [automatic target recognition, computer-based decision aids]
See above.
Good report!
pingypingpingpingpingpingping
Marines have found suspected fighters from Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Sudan, a Marine officer said on condition of anonymity. They also have captured men in Iraqi police and military uniforms.
See link above.
|
Thanks! Good article.
Our Troops and their leadership rock, as well as the Americans who support them.
Im proud of what our armed forces are accomplishing.
US Marines of the first division call for support after coming under fire in the western part of Fallujah, Iraq (news - web sites), Saturday, Nov. 13, 2004. Iraq's national security adviser Qassem Dawoud said Saturday the massive military operation to retake Fallujah 'is accomplished' with about 1,000 insurgents killed and 200 captured.(AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. military officials said Saturday that American troops had now "occupied" the entire city of Fallujah and there were no more major concentrations of insurgents still fighting after nearly a week of intense urban combat.
A U.S. officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Fallujah was "occupied but not subdued." Artillery and airstrikes also were halted after nightfall to prevent mistaken attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces who had taken up positions throughout the city.
Iraqi officials declared the operation to free Fallujah of militants was "accomplished" but acknowledged the two most wanted figures in the city — Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi — had escaped.
U.S. officers said, however, that resistance had not been entirely subdued and that it still could take several days of fighting to clear the final pockets.
The offensive against Fallujah killed at least 24 American troops and an estimated 1,000 insurgents, and rebel attacks elsewhere — especially in the northern city of Mosul — have forced the Americans to shift troops away from Fallujah.
Exploiting the redeployment, insurgents stepped up attacks in areas outside Fallujah, including a bombing that killed two Marines on the outskirts of the former rebel bastion 40 miles west of Baghdad.
Military activity also surged along the Euphrates River valley well to the north and west of Baghdad, with clashes reported in Qaim on the Syrian border and in Hit and Ramadi, nearer to the capital.
A series of thunderous explosions rocked central Baghdad after sunset Saturday, and sirens wailed in the fortified Green Zone, which houses major Iraqi government offices and the U.S. Embassy. There was no immediate explanation for the blasts, but the Ansar al-Sunnah Army later claimed responsibility for firing several rockets at the zone. The claim's authenticity could not be verified.
A car bomb exploded on the main road to Baghdad airport, and there was fighting near the Education Ministry in the heart of the capital.
At least four people were killed and 29 wounded, police said, during a U.S. airstrike on rebels and clashes Saturday in the Abu Ghraib suburb of western Baghdad. One Iraqi was killed and 10 wounded in fighting between U.S. troops and insurgents in the northern city of Tal Afar.
The drive against remaining insurgent holdouts in southern Fallujah was aimed to eradicate the last major concentration of fighters at the end of nearly a week of air and ground assaults. U.S. and Iraqi forces claim to control 80 percent of the city.
"We are just pushing them against the anvil," said Col. Michael Formica, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division's 2nd Brigade. "It's a broad attack against the entire southern front."
As a prelude to the Saturday assault, a U.S. warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb on an insurgent tunnel network in the city, CNN embedded correspondent Jane Arraf reported.
U.S. and Iraqi forces also have begun moving against insurgent sympathizers among Iraq (news - web sites)'s hardline Sunni religious leadership, arresting at least four prominent clerics and raiding offices of religious groups that had spoken out against the Fallujah assault.
U.S. officials said they hoped the latest attack would finish off the last pocket of significant resistance in Fallujah. Next was a planned house-to-house clearing operation to find boobytraps, weapons and guerrillas still hiding in the rubble.
In Baghdad, Iraqi National Security Adviser Qassem Dawoud proclaimed the Fallujah assault — code-name Operation Al-Fajr, or "Dawn" — was "accomplished" except for mopping up "evil pockets which we are dealing with now."
"The number of terrorists and Saddam (Hussein) loyalists killed has reached more than 1,000," Dawoud said. "As for the detainees, the number is 200 people."
However, Dawoud said al-Zarqawi, whose al-Qaida-linked group was responsible for numerous car-bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages, and the main Fallujah resistance leader, Sheik al-Janabi "have escaped." The United States has offered a $25 million reward for al-Zarqawi.
As U.S. forces pressed their attacks in southern Fallujah, Marines in the northern districts were hunting for about a dozen insurgents dressed in Iraqi National Guard uniforms who were reportedly wandering the city streets.
"Any (Iraqi National Guard) or (Iraqi special forces) not seen with the Marines are to be considered hostile," Lt. Owen Boyce, 24, of Simsbury, Conn., told his men.
U.S. and Iraqi officials want to restore control of Fallujah and other Sunni militant strongholds before national elections scheduled by Jan. 31.
A four-vehicle convoy of the Iraqi Red Crescent carrying humanitarian assistance arrived in Fallujah after the Iraqi and American troops allowed it to pass.
In the southern city of Nasiriyah, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said he expected the operation in Fallujah to conclude by Sunday with a "clear-cut" victory over the insurgents and the terrorists.
"We have captured their safe houses, where they killed people," Allawi said. "We have captured the masks they wore when they slaughtered and decapitated people."
Allawi, a Shiite Muslim, brushed aside suggestions the operation would create a backlash among the country's Sunni minority.
"There is no problem of Sunnis or Shiites," he said. "This is all Iraqis against the terrorists. We are going to keep on breaking their back everywhere in Iraq. We are not going to allow them to win."
Despite the evident military success in Fallujah, U.S. commanders have warned that the insurgency in Iraq will continue — evidenced by the recent spike in violence in the remainder of the Sunni Muslim regions of central Iraq.
The U.S. command withdrew one battalion of the 25th Infantry Division in Fallujah and returned it to Mosul after insurgents attacked police stations, bridges and government buildings Thursday in clashes that killed 10 Iraqi troops and one U.S. soldier.
Mosul was quieter Saturday, but a car bomb exploded as an Iraqi National Guard convoy sent from Kirkuk passed, witnesses said. Seven National Guardsmen were wounded.
The region's governor blamed the uprising on "the betrayal of some police members" and said National Guard reinforcements — many of them ex-members of the Kurdish peshmerga militia taken from garrisons along the Syrian and Iranian borders_ had arrived to help end the violence. The events in Mosul cast further doubt on capabilities of Iraqi forces to maintain order — a key U.S. strategy goal.
Fierce fighting in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq has taken its toll on the Americans. More than 400 wounded soldiers have been transported to the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, a hospital spokeswoman said.
___
Associated Press reporters Edward Harris in Fallujah and Tini Tran, Sameer N. Yacoub, Mariam Fam, Sabah Jerges, Katarina Kratovac and Maggie Michael in Baghdad contributed to this report.
That will have a very positive impact.
A US Marine arrests Iraqi men in the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Saturday, Nov. 13, 2004. About 80 percent of the city was said to be under U.S. control, with insurgents pushed into a narrow corner. But the battle has claimed at least 24 American lives and wounded about 170 U.S. troops, and violence has now spread to other Sunni Muslim areas of Iraq.(AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
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