AP Report here:
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Today: June 18, 2005 at 8:10:58 PDT
U.S., Iraq Forces Battle Insurgents
By JACOB SILBERBERG
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KARABILAH, Iraq (AP) -
0617iraq U.S. Marines and Iraqi forces battled insurgents on two fronts Saturday in a restive western province, killing about 50 militants in a dusty frontier town in the military's latest campaign to stop foreign fighters infiltrating from neighboring Syria.
The military also announced Saturday that two U.S. soldiers were killed and one was wounded during a small-arms skirmish with insurgents late Friday while transporting a detainee near Buhriz, about 35 miles north of Baghdad. A civilian and the detainee also were killed, and five Iraqi police officers were wounded.
At least 1,718 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Operation Spear, or Romhe in Arabic, was in its second day in Karabilah, about 200 miles west of Baghdad, in Anbar province. Karabilah, which is along the Syrian border, long has been considered an insurgent hotbed.
"The goal is not to seize territory," said Marine Col. Stephen Davis, a commander from New Rochelle, N.Y. "This is about going in and finding the insurgents. This is not a walk-through-the-river exercise."
Three U.S. troops have been wounded since the operation began Friday, Davis said. The campaign involves about 1,000 Marines and Iraqi forces backed by battle tanks. About 100 insurgents have been captured, the military said.
"Approximately 50 insurgents have been killed since the operation began," Marine Capt. Jeffrey Pool said from Ramadi, the provincial capital.
A second campaign of about the same size, Operation Dagger, was launched Saturday - this one targeting the marshy shores of a remote lake north of Baghdad. About 1,000 U.S. Marines and Iraqi troops, backed by fighter jets and tanks, were participating.
Operation Dagger, or Khanjar in Arabic, is seeking insurgent training camps and weapons caches in the southern part of the Lake Tharthar area, 53 miles northwest of Baghdad.
On March 23, U.S. and Iraqi forces killed about 85 militants at a suspected training camp along Lake Tharthar. That raid turned up booby-trapped cars, suicide-bomber vests, weapons and training documents. The insurgents included Iraqis, Filipinos, Algerians, Moroccans, Afghans and Arabs from neighboring countries, officials said.
In Karabilah, Marines and Iraqi forces fought their way into the town. On Friday, U.S. fighter aircraft dropped bombs and the tanks fired shells at insurgents holed up inside buildings.
"Marines and Iraqi soldiers continued operations through the night, securing key objectives in and around the city while conducting presence patrols in order to hamper the insurgents' movement," Pool said.
During their sweep, four Iraqi hostages were found "beaten, handcuffed and chained to a wall in a bunker."
Marines carried out two major operations around Qaim last month, killing 125 insurgents in Operation Matador and 14 in Operation New Market. Eleven Marines were killed in those actions, which targeted insurgents using the road from Damascus, Syria, to Baghdad.
The new campaign began just before dawn Friday in the desert wastes around Karabilah and Qaim.
Troops captured about 100 foreign fighters and discovered at least one car bomb factory, said Col. Bob Chase, chief of operations for the Second Marine Division. U.S. and Iraqi troops encountered some resistance, but Chase did not characterize it as significant.
Iraqi troops did not participate in the earlier offensives. This time, they not only fought alongside the Americans but used their language skills and local knowledge to spot foreign fighters, Chase said.
U.S. military intelligence officials believe the area is the main entry point used by extremist groups such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq to smuggle foreign fighters into the country. Syria is under intense pressure from Washington and Baghdad to tighten control of its porous 380-mile border with Iraq.
The area has been flush with insurgents in recent weeks. Marines carried out June 11 airstrikes that killed about 40 militants after a nearly five-hour gunfight on the outskirts of Karabilah. Insurgents also killed 21 people - beheading three of them - believed to be a group of missing Iraqi soldiers. The bodies were found June 10.
More than 1,100 people have been killed since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Shiite-led government was announced in April.
In other violence Saturday, insurgents killed at least four people in Baghdad, including two Iraqi soldiers and a 10-year-old girl, hospital and police officials said. Twenty people - including an Iraqi journalist - were wounded.
The girl was killed and two people were wounded when a roadside bomb missed a passing American military convoy, said Dr. Muhand Jawad of Baghdad's Al-Yarmouk hospital.
A suicide car bomber slammed into an Iraqi army convoy in the Yarmouk neighborhood, killing two soldiers and wounding six near a dangerous highway - also known as the Street of Death - leading from downtown to the airport, police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.
An Iraqi reporter working for the Saudi-owned television network Al-Arabiya was shot in the neck while leaving a Baghdad restaurant, the station said. Jawad Khadim, believed to be in his mid-30s, was seriously wounded.
The body of a Sunni tribal leader also was found Saturday outside Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. Sheikh Arkan Shaalan Jassim al-Edwan, who had been shot, was sprawled on a roadside portrait of Saddam Hussein, police Lt. Adnan Abdullah said.
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While Operation Spear is going on in Iraq, Operation SMEAR is being lead by Dick Durbin on the Senate floor. God Bless our troops who are still doing their jobs in spite of the betrayal they face among our lawmakers and media.
