Posted on 03/22/2006 2:26:40 AM PST by AZRepublican
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces trapped dozens of insurgents Wednesday during a two-hour gunbattle at a police station south of Baghdad, a day after 100 masked gunmen stormed a jail near the Iranian border and freed more than 30 prisoners, most of them fellow insurgents.
Sixty gunmen, firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, attacked the Madain police station before dawn, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammadawi said.
U.S. troops and a special Iraqi police unit responded, catching the insurgents in crossfire and capturing 50 of the group, including a Syrian, al-Mohammadawi said.
A special police commander was killed and five policemen were wounded, he said. None of the attackers were killed.
Madain, 14 miles southeast of Baghdad, is at the northern tip of Iraq's Sunni-dominated "Triangle of Death," a region rife with sectarian violence — retaliatory kidnappings and killings in the underground conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.
In a highly publicized episode last April, there were reports Sunni militants had seized 100 Shiites and threatened to kill them unless all Shiites left the Madain area. Iraqi security forces swept into the region and found no hostages.
In the capital, roadside bombs that targeted police patrols wounded at least six policemen, including four who work as guards at the education ministry, police said. Gunmen in western Baghdad attacked a truck carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims returning from a religious commemoration in the city of Karbala, killing one, police said. Ten others were wounded.
Also early Wednesday, gunmen killed three civilians transporting bricks on a country road outside the city of Baqouba northeast of Baghdad, police said. A roadside bomb then exploded when a police patrol went to the site, wounding one officer, police said.
The body of a man wearing an Iraqi military uniform was delivered to a morgue in the southern city of Kut, a morgue official said. The man had been killed outside Madain, he said.
In the Tuesday attack in Muqdadiyah, about 100 gunmen cut phone wires and fired rocket-propelled grenades in a daring operation that freed 18 fellow insurgents who had been captured in police raids just two days earlier.
Police said 15 other captives were sprung in the assault on the Muqdadiyah lockup. Twenty Iraqi security men and at least 10 insurgents were killed in the attack,
In an Internet posting Tuesday night the military wing of the Mujaheddin Shura Council, a militant Sunni Muslim insurgent group, purportedly claimed it carried out the operation. The Web posting said the group killed "40 policemen, liberated 33 prisoners and captured weapons." The claim was posted on the Iraqi News Web site and could not be independently verified.
With the telephone lines cut, the insurgents had 90 minutes to battle their way into the law enforcement compound before police reinforcements showed up from the nearby villages of Wajihiyah and Abu Saida, police said.
Muqdadiyah, on the eastern fringe of the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad, is about 25 miles from the Iranian frontier.
By the time the insurgents fled, taking away the bodies of many of their dead compatriots, nearly two dozen cars were shot up and set on fire and the jail was a charred mass of twisted bunk bed frames and smoldering mattresses.
U.S. helicopters were in the air above the jail after the insurgents had fled. Police said there was firing into the air by residents, but it was not clear if the American aircraft were the target. None was hit.
The insurgents whose incarceration apparently prompted the assault were detained Sunday during raids by security forces in the nearby villages of Sansal and Arab, police said.
Both U.S. and Iraqi military officials had said last year that the area was no longer an insurgent stronghold, but Tuesday's attack showed the militants still could assemble a large force, capable of operating in the region virtually at will.
The insurgency's strength, spiraling sectarian violence and the continuing stalemate over forming a government in Iraq have led politicians and foreign policy experts to say Iraq was on the brink or perhaps in the midst of civil war.
With an increasing number of Americans calling for a pullout of U.S. forces regardless of the consequences for Iraq, a powerful group of U.S. senators met with interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Tuesday to discuss prospects for formation of a national unity government.
The Bush administration views that step as all-important in establishing peace and opening the way for the start of a U.S. troop withdrawal as early as this summer.
Al-Jaafari said he believed Iraq's most difficult political hurdles had been crossed and predicted a new government would be ready in the coming weeks.
"I hope that the formation of the new government does not last beyond April," al-Jaafari said after the meeting.
Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said: "April is fine, but it is necessary that this commitment be kept in order for there to be continued support for the presence of American troops in Iraq."
Committee chairman, Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), a Virginia Republican, said decisions on the U.S. troop presence would be made not only by Bush, Congress and other leaders, but also by the American people — a seeming allusion to declining U.S. popular support for the Iraq war.
"If it's perceived in America that they are proceeding with this government in less than a sincere and prompt way, then the people of the United States of America will speak up and speak up very loudly," Warner said he told al-Jaafari in the meeting.
Most mainstream Iraqi politicians do not want the U.S. to withdraw troops until the insurgency is defeated, although some more radical leaders, like firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, demand an immediate pullout.
In other violence Tuesday, a roadside bomb killed one policeman and wounded three in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, authorities said.
A U.S. soldier with the 4th Infantry Division was killed by small-arms fire Tuesday while patrolling the streets of western Baghdad, the U.S. military reported. At least 2,315 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Police discovered a total of 13 corpses Tuesday, nine of them in Baghdad. The other four bodies, full of bullet wounds, were found on the shores of the Tigris river about 55 miles south of the capital, police said.
Also in the capital, gunmen killed an employee of the Baghdad mayor's office while he was driving in Dora in south Baghdad.
No trial, no interrogation, just an immediate bullet to the head.
L
Can't wait for the AP to depict this as a massacre of children, you know those 19-25 post adolescents boys.
Ping.
Note also regarding yesterday's jail break:
"The governor of Diyala province, which has a volatile ethnic and sectarian mix and has seen many al Qaeda attacks in recent months, had the police commander and other officers arrested."
"He suspected them of complicity in the dawn raid, which police said involved about 100 fighters, probably from al Qaeda."
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L21236833.htm
Lurker wrote: "From this moment forward any foreign national captured inside Iraq commiting hostile acts needs to be summarily executed in public."
Concur in part. They definitely need to be executed but only after they are interrogated and given a quick but fair trial. They should be kept alive only so long as they provide valuable intelligence about their fellow terrorists. Also, the trial and execution should be performed by Iraqi authorities--not US forces.
According to the Geneva Convention they don't merit a trial, and interrogation is completely optional.
They are belligerents out of uniform; classic unlawful combatants and as such the only 'right' they have is to a speedy summary execution after a drum head Courts Martial which can be conducted in the field immediately after their capture.
I disagree even with interrogating them. We already know where they're coming from and we know who is sponsoring them. Just line them up against a wall and shoot them dead. Then leave the corpses for the dogs to devour. For good measure hang the heads along the Iranian and Syrian borders.
L
drag out the panties and get some intel from these prisoners
Lurker wrote: "I disagree even with interrogating them. We already know where they're coming from and we know who is sponsoring them."
But we don't know who specifically is aiding them within Iraq. No doubt they have some military intelligence value. As for a Courts Martial, I agree. Trial by military authorities is fine by me. Also, your idea for decorating the Iranian and Syrian borders has considerable merit.
Them's not great numbers, folks. Granted, apparently there were 21 police KIA and 5 WIA, and that's not good, but the Iraqi police and military will win easily if it turns into a game of attrition on those terms.
My bet is that it was at least a few of them.
So it seems to me the terrorists are just about back to square one.
I also find it hard to believe that in a firefight like that one not a single bad guy caught a bullet.
L
To an point, yes. But we often find out who they're working with when we interrogate them, which leads to more raids, which leads to more dead or captured terrorists. If there's anything we're learning from this war, it's that the U.S. military power is like a huge resivior of strength, but strength that has to be pumped through a tiny pipeline of intelligence first. The more intel we collect, the wider the pipes get, and the more hosed the insurgents are.
Just killing them needs we're stuck sitting around waiting for them to attack us, rather then going and finding them in their homes while they're not ready for us.
That is a little unusual, and I'm guessing there's a simple explaination why.
It is VERY common for them to surrender without a shot, or after overwhelming force shows up. In this instance, what I'm guessing happened is this: The insurgents were caught in a crossfire by U.S. and Iraqi reinforcements, as stated, and probably suffered casualties that have yet to be fully assessed or reported.
It's easy to report police/military casualties because we know everyone by name and number. It's harder with a large group of banged up insurgents. They were probably shipped off en mass to a holding area and whatever EKIA/EWIAs there were, are still being assessed, and as of the printing of the article, not yet reported. Given the poor level of detail in the article, I'm pretty sure that's what happened.
And it's worse than back to square one for them. That's a big net loss for that group, and we now have our hands on a large number of people that probably would rather talk to us than be handed over to the Kurds. Insurgents tend to give up quick, and spill the beans quick.
I hope they didn't hurt any of them, or violate any of their rights, (sarcasm)
I'm with you on that.
Its time to follow the Geneva Convention's rules of warfare.
Little known to the libs, they do work both ways.
Better yet -- the execution should be carried out by the public. How about stoning? That would be perfect.
But of course the only thing I saw on the network news was the report of the first attack that was 'lost'. Just as Prez Bush said yesterday, the media wants to only report bad news.
It was frustratingly amusing this morning:
Our local channel news obliviously made the President's point right there for him:
Reporter: Blah-blah Prez Bush talked to reporters, blah-blah complained about reporting not being balanced blah-blah. In other news, a large group of insurgents attacked a prison, killed a bunch of Iraqi police and freed 30-some prisoners blah-blah...
Did the MSM puppet then note that a later attack on another prison was repelled and Iraqi/US forces killed almost as many as had been freed ealier and in addition captured 50-some NO! That would be good news. AAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH.
Sixty gunmen, firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, attacked the Madain police station before dawn, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammadawi said.
U.S. troops and a special Iraqi police unit responded, catching the insurgents in crossfire and capturing 50 of the group, including a Syrian, al-Mohammadawi said.
Your absolutely correct in your reference to allow them to be killed on the spot.
But leave it to the locals to decide on the value of intelligence gathering.
Let's call it a pick'em.
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