Iraqis step up attacks against US-led forces

News, June 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info

Jordan Times, 6/27/03

BAGHDAD (AP) — American troops in Baghdad on Thursday searched for two missing US soldiers and their Humvee on a day of deadly back-to-back attacks on US forces in Iraq. Officials continued to play down the violence, saying there's no nationally coordinated insurgency. But shattered glass, bloodstains and mangled vehicles may speak to a different reality.

US military officials said two US soldiers and their Humvee had gone missing in Baghdad. American forces searched the city for hours to find them.

Also Thursday, one special operations soldier was killed and eight others were injured in a hostile fire incident in southwest Baghdad, said a US Central Command statement, offering no further details.

Between Wednesday and Thursday, assailants blew up a US military vehicle with a roadside bomb, dropped grenades from an overpass, destroyed a civilian SUV travelling with US troops, blew up an oil pipeline and fired an apparent rocket-propelled grenade at a US Army truck.

Two American soldiers and two Iraqi civilians were killed and at least six US soldiers were wounded, in addition to the two who went missing.

Reports of attacks on US troops appeared almost hourly — too frequent for military press officers to keep up with.

Most of the information came from witnesses at the attack scenes.

Even before the latest violence began, US intelligence officers had warned ground commanders to expect an increase in attacks against US forces between June 25 and July 10.

It was not clear what intelligence the warning was based on.

The attacks have now spread to Shiite areas south of Baghdad that had been largely free of the violence plaguing the Sunni areas north and west of the capital — where Saddam Hussein had enjoyed a degree of support.

On Tuesday, gunmen furious over the killing of five civilians during a demonstration, allegedly at the hand of British troops, shot dead six UK troops in the southern town of Majar Al Kabir.

A day later, an ambush wounded three Marines in Hilla, 70 kilometres south of Baghdad.

A Marine was killed and two were injured when their vehicle — part of a quick reaction force dispatched in response to the Hilla ambush — rolled over on the soft shoulder on the way to the scene.

The surge in ambushes came despite assurances that the troops are mopping up resistance. A US military official said the intensifying attacks on US and British troops could be a response to almost two weeks of raids targeting loyalists of Saddam's Baath Party.

Arab Satellite station Al Jazeera aired statements Thursday from two groups urging attacks on US-led forces in Iraq, with one claiming responsibility for recent attacks and the other pressing for "revenge" against America.

The first statement — from a previously unknown group calling itself Mujahedeen of the Victorious Sect — warned Iraqis away from "places where the American forces are deployed" and promised more "painful attacks against the occupation forces in the near future."

The station aired a second statement from another unknown group calling itself the Popular Resistance for the Liberation of Iraq. It called on intellectuals, explosive experts, liberation movements and "all those who wish to take revenge on America" to come to Iraq.

Al Jazeera's correspondent in Baghdad, Wadah Khanfar, said the groups are believed to be armed organisations but noted that the station could not verify the statements.

A US military spokesman, Maj. William Thurmond, played down recent days' attacks as a "spike" and not a trend.

Thurmond said the spate of ambushes could be a response to recent US raids on Baath Party strongholds.

"There have been more attacks recently but it's probably premature to say this is part of a pattern," Thurmond said. "We've kicked open the nests of some of these bad guys."

Another military spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, reiterated earlier US statements that the attacks were "militarily insignificant" and followed "no regional or national coordination."

An Iraqi police official, Brig. Ahmed Khazem, called the ambushes "isolated actions ... carried out by individual mercenaries."

Yet the upsurge in violence is causing concern that the US-led occupation of Iraq is turning into a guerrilla war.

The most recent attacks include:

— a bomb that exploded Thursday by a US military vehicle on the road leading to Baghdad's airport, killing one US soldier and injuring another, according to US soldiers at the scene.

— a grenade attack on a US-led convoy in Baghdad that killed two Iraqi employees of the national electricity authority. US troops evacuated the two bodies from the badly damaged vehicle, which was covered with blood and broken glass.

— the destruction of a US Army truck on a highway 30 kilometres south of Baghdad Thursday afternoon.

Witnesses at the scene said it exploded in a fireball as if it had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

— the dropping of grenades Wednesday from a Baghdad overpass onto a passing convoy of Army Humvees, said Marine Corps Maj. Sean Gibson. There were no serious injuries.

— an explosion at an oil pipeline near Ishaqi, 70 kilometres northwest of Baghdad, according to Al Jazeera, which showed footage of flames shooting into the sky.

Responding to the violence, US forces pressed ahead with aggressive patrols throughout Iraq, conducting 1,185 day patrols and 975 night patrols, a US military statement said. They also conducted 199 day patrols and 122 night patrols jointly with Iraqi police, the statement said.

US soldiers in Khaldiyah, 60 kilometres west of Baghdad, raided three homes and arrested four suspects after an informant provided them the names of six men allegedly involved in ambushes against US forces.

Backed up by Bradley fighting vehicles, a platoon of about 35 soldiers from A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division rushed towards the homes.

An old women in one of the houses shouted "Dogs! Dogs!" at the troops.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

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