EFL: BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - American fighter jets flattened a suspected insurgent safe house near the Syrian border, the U.S. military said Friday, as hundreds of U.S. troops searched remote desert villages house by house for followers of Iraq's most wanted militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. American forces have met little resistance since the first two days of Operation Matador, aimed at clearing a region believed to be a haven for foreign fighters slipping over the border from Syria, the military said in a statement Friday. American intelligence indicates the insurgents are either in hiding or have fled the region, U.S. Capt. Jeffrey Pool said in the statement. Villagers reached by telephone Friday said gunmen still roamed some areas and they continued to receive U.S. shelling.
The U.S. offensive - one of the largest since militants were forces from Fallujah six months ago - comes amid a surge of militant attacks that have killed more than 420 people in just over two weeks since Iraq's first democratically elected government was announced. The U.S. military said information gained from a "senior terrorist" captured during the operation near the Syrian border led Marines to the safe house Thursday in Karabilah, a village about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad. | "senior terrorist"; anyone we know? |
As Marines approached, at least four gunmen fired on them from the building, the military statement said. U.S. F-18 Super Hornet jets destroyed the building with a combination of bombs and rockets, the statement said. | When you care to send the very best |
The offensive was launched after U.S. intelligence showed large numbers of insurgents had moved into the northern Jazirah Desert following losses in Fallujah and Ramadi, further east. The area is believed to be a staging ground for foreign fighters, who receive weapons and equipment there to launch attacks in Iraq's main cities. | Push them out of the cities into the open and kill them |
The U.S. military has confirmed five Marine deaths so far and says about 100 insurgents have been killed in the operation. But a Washington Post reporter embedded with U.S. forces put the American death toll Thursday at seven - six of them from one squad. Gunmen were taking over the homes of Iraqi citizens to evade Marines in the area, the U.S. military said Friday.
Residents reached by telephone in Saadah said American forces were periodically shelling their village Friday. "The situation is very bad ... Most of the people have fled to the desert," said Samran Mukhlef Abed, a tribal leader. "The Americans are all around ... and medical services do not exist here. If someone is hurt, we have to take him to cities that are far way from here and that is impossible with the situation." The U.S. military denied resident reports that some areas have been without electricity and running water since the offensive began late Saturday, but said regional hospital services were disrupted when a suicide car bomber attacked the hospital in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, on Saturday.
The U.S. military said it was receiving intelligence from local residents, fed up with the presence of foreign fighters in the region. But residents voiced equal frustration with U.S. forces, who pounded the area with airstrikes, artillery barrages and gunfire during the first days of the offensive "They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We have nothing left," one man told Associated Press Television News in Qaim on Thursday. He did not give his name and hid his face with a scarf to address the camera. | Uh huh, a typical "reliable source" |
Families were fleeing in trucks packed with luggage and APTN footage showed plumes of smoke rising from the town. On the outskirts of Qaim, where the offensive began Saturday, a group of masked gunmen armed with machine guns, remained defiant Thursday. "We will fight whoever comes, whether they are American or Arab," one of them told APTN. U.S. and Iraqi forces have conducted stepped up raids across the country in recent weeks. Iraq's government announced Thursday the capture of two more wanted insurgents - one a bomb maker with links to al-Zarqawi identified as Seif-Eddine Mustafa al-Naimi, the other a financier for an insurgent group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq identified as Amar Farid Abdul-Qader Ashur al-Jibouri. |