Battles Rage Across Saddam Heartland Where Guerrillas Resist US Occupation

American troops claimed yesterday to have killed 27 Iraqis who ambushed a tank with rocket-propelled grenades north of Baghdad.

The number of attacks on US forces north and west of the capital has risen sharply in recent weeks and the military says it has killed a total of 70 Iraqi fighters. But the fighting has brought the loss of an Apache helicopter shot down in an attack on a guerrilla training camp on Thursday.

Although President Bush has declared major combat in Iraq is over, some 40 American soldiers have been killed since the beginning of May. At that rate, American casualties since the war may soon exceed those suffered during the war itself.

The US has launched two operations this week to try to stop sporadic guerrilla attacks in the Sunni Muslim heartland north of Baghdad. Some of the resistance is being stoked by leaflets - one of which may have been written by Saddam Hussein himself - that have called for armed resistance against the US occupation.

Guerrillas fired rocket-propelled grenades at a tank patrol of the 4th Infantry Division yesterday in Balad, a farming town of 20,000 people, 60 miles north of Baghdad. A US statement said: "The tanks returned fire, killing four of the attackers and forcing the remainder to flee. Tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, reinforced with AH-64 Apache helicopters, pursued the enemy personnel, killing 23 of the attackers."

No American soldiers were killed or injured in the attack, in which the attackers sprung from a thicket of reeds on an isolated rural road.

It is not clear how many Iraqi casualties really were fighters. In country areas, Iraqi civilians invariably own weapons, which may include rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine-guns. "A man in Iraq does not think he is really a man unless he has a gun, the bigger the better," said one Iraqi observer.

In an indication of growing US anxiety about the number of attacks, some 4,000 US troops have been searching an area north-east of Balad during the past five days in "Operation Peninsula Strike". It is the biggest single operation against guerrillas since Baghdad fell.

In another operation, a US military spokesman said the 101st Airborne and special operations units had attacked a "terrorist" training camp near Haditha in north-west Iraq. One US soldier was wounded. The two-man crew of the Apache helicopter shot down were both rescued. Some 70 to 80 SAM-7 shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles were found in the camp along with more than 75 rocket-propelled grenades and 20 AK-47 rifles.

In a separate incident, US troops arrested 74 people described as al-Qa'ida sympathisers in a raid on Thursday near the northern city of Kirkuk.

The US portrays its operations this week as part of "the continuous effort to eradicate Baath party loyalists, paramilitary groups and other subversive elements". But the signs are that many of the guerrilla attacks are spontaneous or in reaction to heavy-handed searches by US troops.

In farming areas, Iraqis speak bitterly of US soldiers entering women's quarters - they also accuse them of spying on women using nightvision equipment.

The atmosphere throughout Iraq remains very edgy with many Iraqis claiming there are more guerrilla attacks and heavier US losses than are being reported, though there is no evidence for this. Since the dissolution of the 350,000-strong Iraqi army by the US last month, the country is awash with weapons and men, now without jobs, trained to use them.

In farming areas, Iraqis speak bitterly of US soldiers entering women's quarters - they also accuse them of spying on women using nightvision equipment.

Sounds like the reporter for the Independent thinks that presents appropriate justification for attacking American troops. But then again, I am sure most Independent reporters think that no justification is needed for attacking American troops.

Independent is FAR left. They weren't happy on April 9.

Yasser Alaskary
Media affairs director, Iraqi Prospect Organisation
Wednesday May 21, 2003, UK Guardian

"I am feeling quite low at the moment; I did think that people opposed to the war were genuinely concerned for the Iraqi people and the losses we might have suffered. Now I realise that people's opinions of this war were based almost entirely on a hatred of American policy.

I have always said that declaring war on the basis of the presence of weapons of mass destruction was stupid, but I would have supported anything that got rid of Saddam. It is only now that people living in Iraq can say that they supported the war."

~~~

Yasser Alaskey, Feb. 2003:

"The authorities came to find my parents in the middle of the night - they suspected my father of being involved in the opposition. My uncle pretended to be my father to give him time to run away. My father was taken to the Iranian border by a friend while my mother was driven to Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq. She was hiding in a small village when she gave birth to me in August 1980. She later fled with me to Syria with fake documents, before coming to Britain.

When Saddam's men come after one person they hunt the whole family. My mother's sister and her family were also suspected of supporting the opposition. In Iraq, mere suspicion of something is enough to get you taken in for questioning. Reports from people released from prison say they saw the authorities burning my two-year-old cousin alive in front of her parents to get them to talk. As they refused my aunt was raped in front of my uncle and executed. Eventually my uncle was also executed. My grandparents managed to hide their one-year-old son; he was later smuggled to Iran."
~~~

Tales of Saddam's Brutality [lengthy, graphic, White House websight]
White House -> various press. ^ | Updated regularly.

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