News, December 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
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US forces Kill 3 of Ansar Al-Islam guerilla group in Mosul
Mon December 29, 2003 11:16 AM ET
By Seb Walker MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) -
U.S. forces said they killed three suspected members of a group linked to al Qaeda in a gunbattle in Iraq, and U.S. allies Thailand and Bulgaria vowed their soldiers would stay despite suffering a deadly attack.
Japan, also a supporter of Washington, added its name to a list of countries joining a U.S. initiative to cut Iraq's huge debts, saying it was prepared to write off most of what it was owed if others did the same.
U.S. military officers said that during a raid on a house in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday night, suspected members of the Ansar al-Islam group attacked soldiers with gunfire and grenades, wounding two.
"When the soldiers attempted to enter the home the suspects engaged them with small arms fire and one grenade. The unit returned fire, then entered and cleared the building," the 101st Airborne Division said in a statement.
The American soldiers killed three men during the operation, and turned one male, two females and three children over to the Iraqi police.
Two rocket-propelled grenade launchers, eight grenades and several religious books with "anti-coalition content" were also seized.
Ansar al-Islam, which Washington says has links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, had a stronghold in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule.
U.S. missiles and a ground attack by U.S.-backed scattered the group at the start of the war but officials say it regrouped and is suspected of suicide bombings against occupation troops and international organizations.
Coordinated attacks with suicide car bombs, mortars and machineguns in the holy city of Karbala on Saturday killed five Bulgarian and two Thai soldiers and 12 Iraqis.
A spokesman for Polish-led forces in central Iraq said five people had been arrested on suspicion of being involved in the attacks, but would not specify their nationalities.
Attacks on occupation troops have put pressure on some governments to pull their soldiers out, but both Bulgaria and Thailand pledged to stay.
VOWING TO STAY
Thailand said it would send its first combat troops to Iraq to protect its medical and engineering contingent in Karbala. The soldiers killed were the first Thai troops to die in action abroad since the Vietnam War.
On Sunday, two roadside bomb blasts killed two U.S. soldiers in passing convoys, one in Baghdad and the other near the volatile town of Falluja in the tense "Sunni triangle" region.
The Baghdad blast, in a busy shopping street, also killed two Iraqi children.
The attacks raised to 327 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action in Iraq since war began in March.
In Tokyo, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met James Baker, an envoy dispatched by U.S. President George Bush to major credit nations to try to reach an international agreement.
"Japan would be prepared to eliminate the vast majority of its Iraqi debt, if other...creditors are prepared to do so," a Foreign Ministry statement said.
Japan is owed about $4.1 billion, and penalty payments would in theory would lift the figure to about $7 billion.
Chinese state radio said Beijing would also consider reducing or writing off Iraqi debt.
The United States sees freeing Iraq of its estimated $120 billion foreign debt burden as vital to reviving the economy. Iraq is the most heavily indebted country in the world in proportion to its population.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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