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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Hard boyz say they'll hit oil installations if the US takes on Fallujah |
| 2004-11-04 |
| U.S. jets pounded parts of Fallujah on Thursday, targeting insurgents in a city where American forces were said to be gearing up for a major offensive. Al-Jazeera television broadcast a threat by an unspecified armed group to strike oil installations and government buildings if Americans launch an all-out assault on Fallujah. The report was accompanied by a videotape showing about 20 armed men brandishing various weapons including a truck-mounted machine gun. Gunmen kidnapped a Lebanese-American businessman — the second U.S. citizen seized this week in Baghdad — and videotape Wednesday showed the beheadings of three Iraqi National Guardsmen and an Iraqi officer. Early Thursday, U.S. aircraft fired on several barricaded rebel positions in northeast and southeastern Fallujah, the military said. U.S. soldiers and insurgents also clashed overnight on the southeastern outskirts of the city after insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at Marines. Two insurgents were killed while no U.S. casualties were reported, said Lt. Nathan Braden, of 1st Marine Division. Hospital officials in Fallujah reported three civilians were injured in the overnight shelling. U.S. forces are preparing for a major offensive in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and other Sunni militant strongholds in hopes of curbing the insurgency ahead of January's election. An Iraqi National Guard patrol was hit Thursday by a car bomb in Iskandariyah, an insurgent hot spot 30 miles south of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 15, Iraqi hospital officials said. On Wednesday, a U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded in a roadside bombing 12 miles south of the capital. A suicide driver detonated his vehicle at a checkpoint near Baghdad airport, injuring nine Iraqis and forcing U.S. troops to close the main route for hours. Gunmen killed a senior Oil Ministry official, Hussein Ali al-Fattal, after he left his house in the Yarmouk district of western Baghdad, police said. Al-Fattal was the general manager of a state-owned company that distributes petroleum byproducts. Radim Sadeq, an American of Lebanese origin who worked for a mobile phone company, was grabbed about midnight Tuesday when he answered the door of his home in Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighborhood, officials said. No group claimed responsibility. It was the second abduction this week in Mansour, where many foreign companies are based. On Monday, gunmen stormed the two-story compound of a Saudi company, abducting six people — including an unidentified American, a Nepalese, a Filipino and three Iraqis, two of whom were later released. No claim has been made for the kidnappings. As the wave of abductions continues, another militant group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, posted a videotape on a Web site Wednesday showing the beheading of man it said was an Iraqi army major captured in the northern city of Mosul. A statement by the group called Maj. Hussein Shanoun an "apostate" and said he confessed to participating in attacks against insurgents on orders of the Americans. Just before his death, the victim was shown warning Iraqi soldiers and police against "dealing with the infidel troops," meaning the Americans. In another video, aired Wednesday on Al-Jazeera, a previously unknown group calling itself the Brigades of Iraq's Honorables said it beheaded three Iraqi National Guardsmen, accusing them of spying for the Americans. Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi reaffirmed that Italy would keep its 3,000 troops in Iraq for as long as the Iraqi government wanted. After a meeting with Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, Berlusconi said, "Italy will stay in Iraq according to the requests that will come from a legitimate Iraqi government." His comments came a day after Hungary said it would withdraw its 300 non-combat troops from Iraq by March 31, undercutting Bush's effort to hold the multinational force together. Allawi received encouragement from Pope John Paul II, a staunch opponent of the war, for building democratic institutions in Iraq. John Paul received Allawi at the Vatican and in a brief speech read for the frail pontiff by an aide said he was praying "for all the victims of terrorism and wanton violence" and for those working for the reconstruction of Iraq. The body of a Kurdish contractor missing for three months was found in a deserted area outside the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, an Iraqi official said. Youssef Ahmed, who did business with the interim Iraqi government, was found shot in the head with his hands bound behind his back, said Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed of the Iraqi National Guard. The international medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres said in Belgium it was pulling out of Iraq because of the escalating violence and targeting of aid workers. The organization, also known as Doctors Without Borders, did not say how many staff it has in Iraq, but said it had provided about 100,000 consultations in three clinics in Sadr City, a rundown, mainly Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |