Villagers deny knowledge of the rebels -- except for a teen who describes their getawaysFONTIMIYA, IRAQ — U.S. and Iraqi forces trudged through waterlogged fields, crawled down tunnels and went house to house Friday in a painstaking search for Sunni Arab insurgents, combing a remote rural region east of Baghdad that has been a training and logistics base for Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militant groups.
But for the second day of the 1,000-troop operation, in home after home, they found only women, children and men too old to fight.
Time and again, U.S. forces in Iraq have staged major assaults on known insurgent hide-outs only to have key individuals melt away. As with other operations, the military is attempting to dislodge insurgents from their hiding places in Diyala province, then sweep them into known escape routes where they can be intercepted.
But the area's sunken irrigation canals, vast agricultural fields, seldom-traveled back roads and widely scattered hamlets have given guerrillas innumerable ways to avoid capture.
"We are hardly finding any military-aged males," U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Pete Johnson said as he directed a truckload of Iraqi fighters into position outside a village in an icy downpour. "They have all pushed away somewhere. Either they have run away or they are waiting for us." If the insurgents are preparing to make a stand, Johnson said, "we can definitely take the fight to them."
"But if they disappear and hide," he said, "there is no way we can establish positive identification and get them."