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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Iraq launches crackdown, al-Qaeda defiant |
| 2005-05-29 |
| Iraqi forces launched their biggest security crackdown since the fall of Saddam Hussein with the start of Operation Lightning on Sunday, a sweep by 40,000 Iraqi troops who will seal off Baghdad and hunt for insurgents. Over the next few days, Iraqi soldiers would block major routes into Baghdad and search the city district by district, looking for foreign Arab fighters and Iraqi guerrillas, Iraqi officials said. They would be backed up by around 10,000 U.S. troops deployed in the capital. But al Qaeda's network in Iraq said it had launched a new offensive of its own in response to the operation. Insurgents killed 20 people across Iraq, including a British soldier. An Internet statement from the group said its offensive was led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi "under his planning and supervision." "This ... is in response to the futile plan announced by defense and interior ministers to seal off Baghdad." An Internet posting on Web sites used by insurgents said last week that Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who leads al Qaeda in Iraq, had been wounded. Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said he had been moved to Iran for treatment after being wounded by shrapnel in a U.S. rocket attack. U.S. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday that suggestions Zarqawi was wounded were credible. But al Qaeda in Iraq has said Zarqawi is recovering and is still directing his forces. Washington is offering a $25 million bounty for Zarqawi's death or capture. By Sunday evening, there were few signs of a heightened security presence in Baghdad, although checkpoints were set up in the north and south of the city and cars were searched. Officials said the operation would gather steam in coming days. The launch of the crackdown came after a sharp increase in suicide bombings and ambushes by insurgents who have killed around 700 people in the past month since a new Shi'ite Islamist-led government was announced. At least 70 U.S. troops have been killed in the same period, the highest monthly American death toll since January when insurgents were trying to derail the Jan. 30 elections. "The operation began today. The troops will block all entrances of Baghdad to prevent terrorists from conducting activities in the capital. It's a crackdown on the terrorism infrastructure," a Defense Ministry official told Reuters. The operation was announced on Thursday -- potentially giving insurgents the chance to flee Baghdad before it began. Iraq's government has come under pressure from Washington to launch a decisive response to insurgent attacks, to try to restore public confidence sapped by relentless violence and the long delay in forming a cabinet after the elections. Insurgents kept up their offensive on Sunday. Gunmen ambushed a car carrying Iraqi soldiers south of Baghdad, killing six troops, police said. In Baghdad, insurgents fought gunbattles with police in the west of the capital. Hospital officials said three people were killed, including two police. Two suicide car bomb attacks in the capital, one near the Oil Ministry and the other targeting a police patrol, killed at least six Iraqis, police said. In the town of Tuz Khurmatu south of the oil city of Kirkuk, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near an American military convoy, killing at least two Iraqis. Witnesses said some U.S. casualties were evacuated from the scene by helicopter, but the U.S. military had no immediate information on the attack. Islamic militant group Army of Ansar al-Sunna said in an Internet statement it carried out the attack in Tuz Khurmatu. "This heroic operation was conducted jointly with our brothers in Al Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq." In Madaen, a mixed Sunni-Shi'ite town southeast of Baghdad, a car bomb killed two policemen. Near the town of Amara in mainly Shi'ite southern Iraq, insurgents attacked a British military patrol, killing a British soldier, the Ministry of Defense in London said. "The incident is under investigation but it appears to have been the result of an explosion," a spokesman said, adding several soldiers had been wounded. The U.S. military announced the deaths of two more servicemen. A Marine was killed on Saturday in a roadside bomb attack on his vehicle in western Iraq and an American soldier died on Friday after being wounded by a roadside bomb the previous day southwest of Baghdad. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 "This ... is in response to the futile plan announced by defense and interior ministers to seal off Baghdad." Good to know Bagdad Bob is still employed. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2005-05-29 15:53 |