Posted on 11/26/2005 4:02:24 PM PST by Gucho
By Seth Robson - Stars and Stripes Pacific edition
Sunday, November 27, 2005
CAMP HOVEY, South Korea — Orphans from Dongducheon got a taste of holiday fun here Thursday at a Thanksgiving feast served up by 2nd Infantry Division soldiers.
The dinner, served at the 4th Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment Dining Facility, was for children from the My Home Orphanage. It was part of the division’s Good Neighbor Program, said 2nd Lt. Tae H. Rose with Headquarters Headquarters Company, 1st Heavy Brigade Combat Team.
Rose, 34, who was born in South Korea but raised by adoptive relatives in New York City, said he felt a special bond with the My Home kids.
“My parents both passed away when I was a child. My aunt was married to a GI and she adopted me,” explained Rose, who grew up speaking English but studied Korean in college.
Capt. Dale Woodhouse, commander of Headquarters Headquarters Company, helps a little girl from the My Home Orphanage place a star on the Christmas tree. (Seth Robson / S&S)
After graduating, he worked five years for an advertising agency in South Korea to hone his language skills before joining the Army five years ago. South Korea is his first overseas tour, he said.
Soldiers with his unit visit My Home regularly to play with the orphans there, he said.
“The first time I went out there to interact with the kids, because I could speak Korean I was able to really communicate and bond with them,” Rose said.
At the Thanksgiving feast, Rose stood at the front of the dining hall with a microphone speaking to soldiers in English and to the children in Korean. The youngsters seemed to enjoy their turkey, stuffing and corn on the cob.
“They love the American-style food,” Rose said. “They were asking for seconds and thirds.”
Soon he was passing out Thanksgiving cards to the children.
“The Foreign Language High School at Dongducheon created Thanksgiving cards in Korean for the children to let them know they have a big brother or sister looking out for them who cares for them,” he said. “We wanted to get them to understand what Americans do in terms of celebrating Thanksgiving.”
Other highlights of the feast included trimming a large Christmas tree at the front of the dining hall and interacting with cavalry troops sporting their traditional cowboy hats.
“Some of the kids wanted to dress up like me. I said: ‘If you want to, you can become an officer when you grow up,’” Rose said.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
No U.S. charges over Afghan bodies
American Forces Press Service
BAGHDAD, Nov. 26, 2005 – A family member and coalition sources have confirmed that Oct. 14 raids killed a close confidant of fugitive Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, military officials reported today.
Bilal Mahmud Awad Shebah, also known as Abu Ubaydah, reportedly met weekly with Zarqawi, officials said.
Although intelligence assessments indicated at the time that Abu Ubaydah had been killed in the raids north of Ramadi, officials said, analysts could not then determine his death with certainty.
In late November, coalition forces received information from knowledgeable sources and a close family member of Abu Ubaydah, claiming independently that Zarqawi's confidant was killed in the raids.
Detained al Qaeda members say Abu Ubaydah served as an "executive secretary" for Zarqawi, meeting with the terrorist leader frequently, serving as his messenger and gatekeeper, and screening all messages and requests for meetings. Detainees also claim he provided Zarqawi with safe house locations and used intimidation and death threats to gain the cooperation of the Iraqi people to support al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist activity, detainees. During the course of the raids, conducted on the eve of Iraq's constitutional referendum, several weapons caches, containing mortar rounds, small arms and ammunition, were found and destroyed. Bombs made from mortar rounds also were planted along the road leading to the safe houses as a defense against incoming vehicle or foot traffic.
Coalition forces were engaged by small-arms fire upon their arrival to the suspected terrorist location and immediately returned fire. Combining the ground attack with the use of close-air support, the terrorists' hideout locations were destroyed. No coalition forces were injured or killed during the raids.
(From a Multinational Force Iraq news release.)
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GENEVA, Nov 26 (KUNA) -- The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced Saturday that Hollywood star Brad Pitt donated 40 orthopaedic beds to an Islamabad hospital that has been struggling to cope with thousands of serious medical cases since the devastating October 8 earthquake in northern Pakistan.
The UNHCR added in a statement that Pitt, visiting Pakistan with UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie, met the Executive Director of Islamabad's Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), Dr. Syed Fazle Hadi, on Saturday evening to finalise details of the donation.
Dr. Hadi said that his institute had informed UNHCR a few days ago that 40 special orthopaedic beds for earthquake survivors with spinal injuries were urgently needed.
He told Pitt, "We didn't expect to get a response so soon, and we're extremely grateful for your prompt and generous offer".
Pitt decided to fund the beds, worth over USD 100,000, after seeing the devastation and desperate needs in the Allai valley, Balakot and Muzaffarabad.
On the last day of their three-day visit to the quake zone, Pitt and Jolie helped to airlift and distribute food rations to villagers in Jabel Sharoon, a village 6,000 feet above sea level.
They also offered their moral support to a US Mobile Army Surgery Hospital (MASH) in Muzaffarabad.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
WASHINGTON: A fake "FBI Windows" virus is spreading online that may affect your PC with well-known Sober virus.
It comes in a mail that claims to come from either the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or German police agency BKA and that warns users they have been detected visiting illegal sites, reports the online edition of BBC News.
The subject line of the message also claims that "You visit illegal websites" or "Your IP was logged".
If the user opens the questionnaire attached to the message, the virus becomes active and infects PC.
FBI has denied having sent such mails. The US investigating agency said it does not engage in the practice of sending unsolicited e-mails to the public in this manner.
Anti-virus firms have claimed they caught millions of copies of the malicious programme, suggesting a lot of people have fallen for the fake warning.
The first Sober virus was found in October 2005 and there have been 25 variants released since then. This latest variant checks to see if a machine has been infected by earlier versions and tries to shut them down so it can do its work.
The virus started circulating Nov 22. Mail filtering firm MessageLabs said it caught almost three million copies of the Sober variant in the first 24 hours of the outbreak.
By the end of Wednesday it had netted more than seven million copies of the bug, it said.
The virus also comes in varieties that purport to hold a video of Paris Hilton, fake password change notices and e-mail error messages. It can only infect those using Windows PCs.
F-Secure said the outbreak was the "biggest of the year" and Symantec said the virus was spreading very fast in the wild. Statistics gathered by Trend Micro suggest that most victims were in North America.
The spread of the virus slowed on Wednesday but anti-virus firms urged users to update their protection and not to click on attachments to unsolicited e-mail messages.
November 27, 2005
Sarah Baxter, Washington
ANGERED by negative portrayals of the conflict in Iraq, Bruce Willis, the Hollywood star, is to make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy.
It will be based on the exploits of the heavily decorated members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.
Willis attended Deuce Four’s homecoming ball this month in Seattle, Washington, where the soldiers are on leave, along with Stephen Eads, the producer of Armageddon and The Sixth Sense.
The 50-year-old actor said that he was in talks about a film of “these guys who do what they are asked to for very little money to defend and fight for what they consider to be freedom”.
Unlike many Hollywood stars Willis supports the war and recently offered a $1m (about £583,000) bounty for the capture of any of Al-Qaeda’s most wanted leaders such as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, its commander in Iraq. Willis visited the war zone with his rock and blues band, the Accelerators, in 2003.
“I am baffled to understand why the things I saw happening in Iraq are not being reported,” he told MSNBC, the American news channel.
He is expected to base the film on the writings of the independent blogger Michael Yon, a former special forces green beret who was embedded with Deuce Four and sent regular dispatches about their heroics.
Yon was at the soldiers’ ball with Willis, who got to know him through his internet war reports on www.michaelyon.blogspot.com. “What he is doing is something the American media and maybe the world media isn’t doing,” the actor said, “and that’s telling the truth about what’s happening in the war in Iraq.”
Willis is likely to take on the role of the unit’s commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Erik Kurilla, 39, a Bruce Willis lookalike with a chest full of medals, more hair than Willis and a glamorous blonde wife.
He was injured in August after being shot three times by insurgents “in front of my eyes”, Yon recorded in his blog: “He continued to direct his men until a medic gave him morphine and the men took him away.”
Kurilla now has a titanium plate in his leg. He met Willis at the ball and said that his men were “very excited and appreciative that he was there”. ”
Deuce Four has a chequered history. For decades it was a segregated black unit commanded by a white officer. It was disbanded in 1951 but veterans felt hurt that its past was considered to be a stain on the army and it was revived in the mid-1990s.
When the battalion arrived in Mosul in November last year the city was under threat from insurgents. “We faced very heavy fighting for about three months,” Kurilla recalled. “Every patrol was making contact with enemy forces. We would hit them where they slept, where they worked and where they ate.”
Today the picture was very different, he said. “I have watched a city that was in absolute chaos turn into one that has a viable Iraqi security force, which is taking the lead in fighting the terrorists.”
Yon, 41, went to Iraq after a friend from high school, Scott Helveston, a former navy Seal, was hanged from a bridge in Falluja in an incident that shocked the world. Yon had never blogged before but was the author of Danger Close, a book about his experience as a green beret when he killed a man in a bar-room brawl. He was charged with murder and acquitted on the grounds of self-defence.
“When I landed in Baghdad I was immediately struck by how much of a war zone it was,” Yon said. “Explosions were going off constantly. It was full-on.”
His first experience of Mosul was worse: “I got attacked on my first mission. One of our vehicles got hit with a car bomb and three guys were killed.”
In May, Yon took a photograph of a soldier from the Deuce Four cradling a little Iraqi girl who had been fatally wounded by a suicide bomber. He sensed that the inhabitants of Mosul were turning against the insurgents. “People began to realise that all the insurgents ever did was break things and kill people,” he said. “It started to switch from a firefight to an intelligence war. People started to talk more to us. They would pull us over and give us tips.”
The Iraqi security forces began to take pride in their work, Yon added: “These guys were getting slaughtered but they continued to volunteer and fight. It’s very dangerous now to be a terrorist in Mosul. They’re still out there but it’s not like it was.”
Willis said it would be wrong for Americans to give up on Iraq just as progress is being made. “The Iraqi people want to live in a world where they can move from their homes to the market and not have to fear being killed,” he said. “I mean, doesn’t everybody want that?”
More troops coming to O'ahu (Hawai)
Saturday, November 26, 2005
By William Cole - Advertiser Military Writer
As part of the biggest reorganization of the Army since World War II, Schofield Barracks will add 1,000 soldiers for its Stryker Brigade and another 1,000 for other new units, and more troops will likely be on the way to Hawai'i for years to come.
The Schofield troop arrivals are in conjunction with plans for bringing 300 Stryker armored vehicles to Hawai'i, a new Iraq deployment, a major housing renovation and dozens of unit deactivations and activations under a drive to give brigades more self-contained firepower and enable them to be more expeditionary like the Marines.
Ron Borne, the director of transformation for the Army in Hawai'i, said a former division commander likened the evolution to changing a car tire while the car is moving.
"I think we all agree that at this point it is busy (here), it's a hectic time and it's a historical and impacting time," Borne said.
An increasing focus on the Pacific and instabilities in the region have propelled additions such as the Stryker Brigade and consideration of an aircraft carrier for Hawai'i. A decision on the latter is expected out of the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review in February.
A recent joint U.S.-Japan defense agreement noted that the "U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region is a core capability that is indispensable to regional peace and security."
The 1,000 new soldiers for the Stryker Brigade were announced in late September. The Army has been working through the transformation to a lighter, faster-responding force first with the announcement of seven Stryker Brigades, and more recently on an overall increase from 33 to 43 brigades and an improvement in war-fighting capability.
At Fort Shafter, 194 new service members recently were added with the activation of the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, and the four-star general billet in South Korea could be moved to Hawai'i.
The Associated Press previously reported that Hawai'i would gain 3,700 troops by 2011 as 50,000 service members are brought home to the United States from Germany and South Korea.
BURDEN ON RESOURCES
William Aila, a member of Hui Malama 'O Makua, a group of Hawaiian practitioners, said the troop additions add up to a greater burden on electricity, water and rental housing on O'ahu.
"When you add up that many more individuals and you add the 5,000 more personnel that might be coming with the aircraft carrier task force, that's going to have huge impacts that we're not prepared for," he said.
Aila said he also heard that 1,700 Marines out of Okinawa would be moving to Hawai'i.
Chuck Little, a spokesman for Marine Forces Pacific at Camp Smith, said Aila's information is incorrect.
"Nobody has said anything about moving Marines from Okinawa to Hawai'i," he said. "... That's not to say at some point down the road that decision might be made. But there's been no decision made at this time to relocate any Marines from Okinawa to Hawai'i."
Borne noted the 2,000 additional soldiers would bring the 25th Infantry Division (Light) total at Schofield Barracks to about 15,000, compared to almost 16,000 in the mid-1990s when a brigade of about 3,500 — now at Fort Lewis, Wash. — was stationed here.
Paul Brewbaker, Bank of Hawaii chief economist, has said troop increases need to be put into perspective with the number of military personnel here dropping from 60,000 to around 40,000 since the late 1990s.
"That's fine," Aila said, "but the civilian population has been growing, too, significantly."
The new Army organization means that brigade combat teams are either Stryker, light infantry, or heavy brigades with tanks.
CHANGES UNDER WAY
The 2nd Brigade at Schofield is being transformed to a Stryker Brigade based around speedy, eight-wheeled vehicles that will come in 10 configurations from troop carrier to mobile howitzer.
The 3rd Brigade will continue to use Humvees and trucks, but also will have added assets such as artillery and intelligence, which were formerly available at the division level, to make it more robust and self-sustaining.
Units that have or will be disbanding include the 125th Military Intelligence and 65th Engineer battalions; the 1st Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment; the 68th Medical Company (Air Ambulance); and 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment.
The 25th Combat Aviation Brigade will activate two units by January, the 3rd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment, and the 209th Aviation Support Battalion, among other changes that are under way.
Seven thousand soldiers from Schofield Barracks are slated to deploy to Iraq next year. Soldiers with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, division headquarters and aviation brigade are expected to be in Iraq next summer.
Borne said in many cases, soldiers deactivating from one unit will be used to build up another.
In the case of the aviation brigade, executive officer Maj. Gregory A. Baker told the base newspaper that about 1,000 soldiers would be added to the unit, which also would receive an additional eight UH-60 Black Hawks, six CH-47 Chinooks and 36 OH-58D Kiowa Warriors before deployment.
However, part of that force is expected to be moved to Alaska. The 25th Division now has 39 Black Hawks, nine Chinooks and 40 Kiowas, officials said. After the changes are made, the division will have 50 Black Hawks, 12 Chinooks, and 30 Kiowas — a net increase of four helicopters.
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051126/NEWS08/511260338/1001/NEWS
Your welcome DBR.
By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM - Associated Press Writer
11/26/05
BOMBAY, India - An Indian textile millionaire apparently broke the world record Saturday for the highest flight in a hot air balloon.
The record by Vijaypat Singhania is subject to verification, but his son Gautam Singhania said the 44-ton balloon climbed nearly 70,000 feet, beating the old mark of just under 65,000 feet.
"This goes to show to the world that we are not bullock cart drivers, but we can compete against the best of the world," the balloonist said.
One of the balloon's designers said the height will be determined by instruments sealed inside the capsule. Once verified by aeronautical groups, the findings will be submitted to Guinness World Records.
The 67-year-old balloonist landed safely after a nearly five-hour flight inside a pressurized cabin suspended from the 160-foot-high, multicolored balloon.
The flight was carried live on Indian national television.
"The exact height reached was 69,852 feet. This is subject to certification," said Colin Prescott, one of two British designers of the balloon.
The previous world record was 64,997 feet, set by Sweden's Per Lindstrand in Plano, Texas, in June 1988.
Hundreds of jubilant villagers crowded around the balloon to congratulate Singhania.
"When I broke the record, I was euphoric. I screamed quite loudly," he said.
Singhania lifted off from downtown Bombay and landed safely on barren land near Panchale, a village about 150 miles south of Bombay.
Singhania, the chairman emeritus of the Raymond Group, one of India's leading textile companies, also set a record for ultralight aviation 17 years ago when he flew 6,000 miles from Britain to India in 23 days.
Indian industrialist Vijaypat Singhania speaks during a news conference in Mumbai November 26, 2005. Business tycoon Singhania with a penchant for adventure created a new hot-air balloon altitude record on Saturday, touching the edge of space in a climb to nearly 70,000 feet (21,336 metres). (REUTERS)
Sat Nov 26, 2005 - 2:06 PM ET
PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AFP) - The US military does not have a secret detention facility at its military base in Kosovo, but maintains a joint detention center within the NATO-led peacekeeping mission (KFOR), the US military in Kosovo said.
"There are no secret detention facilities located on Camp Bondsteel (East Kosovo). It is common knowledge that we do have a Kosovo Force (KFOR) detention facility located here," Major Michael Wunn, US military contingent in Kosovo spokesman, told AFP.
"The facility is operated by US Military Police Soldiers fully trained in Detention Center Operations. Currently, no one is detained in this facility," Major Wuun said, adding that "the Bondsteel detention facility is under the command and control of US BG John Harrel, KFOR Multinational Brigade East commanding general."
"The US Army maintains this facility as part of its KFOR responsibilities pursuant to UNSC Resolution 1244. The facility is subject to inspection by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and is regularly inspected by the United States Army, Europe."
Council of Europe human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles said Friday the US military ran a Guantanamo-type detention centre in Kosovo, as an investigation by the organisation into alleged CIA-run secret prisons gathered pace.
He said he had been "shocked" by conditions at the barbed wire-rimmed centre inside a US military base, which he witnessed in 2002.
The camp resembled "a smaller version of Guantanamo", Gil-Robles told France's Le Monde newspaper, referring to the US centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of terror suspects are detained without trial.
Over 17,000 NATO-led peacekeepers from 35 nations, including about 2,000 US troops, are responsible for peace and security in the UN-administered Serbian province.
Ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo came under UN and NATO control in June 1999 after NATO's 11-week bombing campaign ended a brutal crackdown by Serb forces of Albanian rebels.
By Anita Powell - Stars and Stripes Mideast edition
Saturday, November 26, 2005
HAWIJA, Iraq — “Long live the insurgency,” reads graffiti on a wall in this desperately poor, heavily Sunni town in northern Iraq.
Shots from a local sniper regularly ping off U.S. Humvees during their mounted patrols through the dusty, ramshackle agricultural town where men, women and children glare venomously at convoys; where a prominent local imam exhorts followers to fight against the “occupying infidels”; and where more than 70 roadside bombs targeted American soldiers in their first month in the area, a one-month record, said Lt. Col. Marc Hutson, the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment commander.
Hutson’s infantry-heavy unit, part of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Ky., regularly patrols the area, possibly the most dangerous slice of the brigade’s area of operations.
The region, which Hutson estimated to be 98 percent Sunni Arab, lies in the affluent shadow of the northern Kurdish region. The agricultural area, which during Saddam Hussein’s rule enjoyed subsidies and a higher employment rate, now visibly sags under economic depression.
“The lack of economy makes it ripe for the insurgency,” Hutson said. “The economy is the number one reason for insurgent activity in the area.”
And old loyalties die hard. In October, Hutson said, a group of residents held a demonstration protesting the beginning of Saddam’s trial in Baghdad.
But villagers in the area say that perceptions are improving, especially as U.S. troops continue their efforts with local security forces and as the area’s Sunnis begin to increase their participation in the political process.
“There are many reasons that make this area dangerous,” said village leader Faik Ibrahim, 45, the de facto mayor of tiny, friendly Abu Al Jeiss village.
“When the coalition first came, they were shooting people away. They were supporting the political parties. And they were taking people without evidence.
“It’s been changing now. There’s a big difference.”
The people who rebel, he said, do so because “they consider the coalition force as an occupying force. That’s why Iraqis shoot at [Americans].”
Members of the area’s Iraqi security forces, most of whom are natives of the area, say they often feel powerless against the active insurgency.
“I was a company commander in 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war,” said Iraqi Army training officer Lt. Col. Ibrahim Khalaf Suleiman, an officer in Hawija. “I knew the direction of the enemy. But now when I go into Hawija, into the market, I don’t know what direction my enemy is.”
Leaders in the local Iraqi Army brigade professed no knowledge of the so-called “Hawija sniper,” who aims shots from rooftops in central Hawija and who is lauded in graffiti scrawled on walls reading “Long life to the sniper!”
“The bad guys are coming from outside Hawija and making problems for us,” said Sgt. 1st Class Salih Awad Abbas, 48, a 30-year veteran of the former Iraqi Army, through a translator.
“I don’t know anything about the sniper. I can’t identify who’s the bad guy or the sniper.”
Nor could they explain U.S. soldiers’ accounts of a proliferation of roadside bombs discovered within sight of Iraqi Army checkpoints. In fact, Pvt. Uday Ali Hamid, who works at a checkpoint, vowed, “If I see bad guys putting in [bombs], I will kill him.”
When asked, Hutson said he could not speak to the existence or extent of Iraqi Army and police involvement in the insurgency.
“As far as the police and Iraqi Army being involved in terrorist activities,” he said, “I can’t tell you that they are and I can’t tell you that they aren’t.”
But, he added, “we work with them, we do joint operations with them. They are always willing to participate.”
For now, Hutson said, the solution is to soldier on, to continue regular operations, to try to gain the people’s trust through communication.
“We work very closely with the Iraqi Army and every day we engage with the civilian population,” Hutson said. “We go out and meet with different villages, talk to the people, we conduct medical assistance visits, we go to the market and buy goods.
“We want them to see us not as the guys in trucks with big weapons. We want them to see that we’re not there to suppress them, we’re there to help them.
“Are we going a good job of it? I think we are. Are we learning every day? Absolutely. There’s no ‘that is the solution’ answer. It is complex.”
Locals in Hawija are extremely wary of American presence. Even children and women sometimes yell at passing American patrols. (Anita Powell / S&S)
Abu Al Jeiss village leader Faik Ibrahim sits with 2nd Lt. Mike Frank. Ibrahim said he has seen improvements since American forces first came to the area in 2003. (Anita Powell / S&S)
By Joseph Giordono - Stars and Stripes Mideast edition
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Nearly 500 Iraqi and U.S. soldiers wrapped up Operation Lions on Thanksgiving, finishing the latest in a series of operations on the edges of Ramadi.
More than 20 suspected insurgents were arrested during the two-day sweep through the capital of Anbar province, military officials said late Thursday. The U.S. soldiers are part of a contingent attached to the 2nd Marine Division west of Baghdad.
Lions, or Asad in Arabic, targeted the Tamim area of Ramadi, which has long been an insurgent stronghold. U.S. officials have said that attacks in the city of 400,000 have decreased by 60 percent in the past several weeks, which they attribute to a series of clearing operations in anticipation of the Dec. 15 elections.
The operation is the third “disruption operation” targeting al-Qaida in Iraq fighters and seeking to “deny them the ability to influence the Iraqi people” there. “Operation Panthers and Bruins denied AQI terrorists the ability to operate in northern Ramadi,” read a Marine Corps press release.
Voter turnout in Ramadi was sparse in both the January and October votes. That was in part due to security concerns and in part due to a Sunni-led boycott of the vote. But, with a constitution approved by Iraqi voters and a government to be elected on Dec. 15, many Sunni leaders have urged their people to vote this time.
U.S. officials say the recent operations are designed to encourage Ramadi residents to go to the polls next month.
Province’s phone service was disabled for two months
By Joseph Giordono - Stars and Stripes Mideast edition
Sunday, November 27, 2005
BAGHDAD — On the same day phone service was restored in Anbar province for the first time in two months, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched the fourth in a series of operations in the provincial capital of Ramadi.
Residents in Anbar — a Sunni-dominated region and the epicenter of the insurgency — had been without telephone, television and Internet service since insurgents destroyed the network in early October.
On Saturday, American officials announced the resumption of services after a repair effort by the U.S. military and local officials.
“The people of al Anbar Province were reconnected to their country’s capital and the rest of the world today,” read a Marine Corps news release from Camp Blue Diamond, in Ramadi. “The repair of the fiber-optic cable reconnected the province with the national fiber-optic network and will provide many of the more than 1.3 million residents of al Anbar access to services.”
On the same day, a joint force of some 550 U.S. and Iraqi troops launched Operation Tigers in the Ma’Laab district of eastern Ramadi. The operation is the fourth in a series of “disruption operations” aimed at insurgent strongholds in the city.
“Cordon and searches, blocking off known terrorist escape routes, and searching for weapons caches in the targeted areas are incorporated as part of Operation Tigers,” the Marines announced.
The first of the operations, called Operation Panthers, was launched Nov. 16. Since then, Marine officials said, “numerous” insurgents have been killed or captured, and several weapons caches have been seized. The weapons included surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds, artillery shells, land mines and bomb-making materials.
Ramadi, a city of around 400,000, has had woeful turnouts in the previous two nationwide votes. U.S. military officials hope the series of operations brings a measure of security for residents who want to vote for members of a new parliament on Dec. 15. Voters stayed away from the January and October polls because of a combination of security concerns and a boycott ordered by Sunni leaders.
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