Eurasia Press & News
KARABILAH (AP) — Helicopter gunships and fighter jets streaked across the desert sky in the hunt for foreign fighters near Syria’s border Saturday as part of two US-Iraqi offensives that have killed 50 insurgents so far in protracted battles.
Operation Spear, or Romhe in Arabic, entered its second day in Karabilah, about 320 kilometres west of Baghdad.
The dusty and blistering hot town, part of the restive Anbar province that straddles the Iraqi-Syrian border, has long been considered an insurgent hub.
“The goal is not to seize territory,” said Marine Col. Stephen Davis, a commander from New Rochelle, New York.
“This is about going in and finding the insurgents. This is not a walk-through-the-river exercise.”
About 50 insurgents have been killed since the operation began, Marine Capt. Jeffrey Pool said from Ramadi, the provincial capital.
During the military sweep, four Iraqi hostages were found “beaten, handcuffed and chained to a wall in a bunker located in central Karabilah,” he said.
Some of the men found in the torture centre were believed to be Iraqi border guards, Davis said. Troops found nooses, electrical wire and a bathtub filled with water for electric shocks and mock drownings in the bunker, he said.
A nearby schoolhouse thought to be a terrorist training institute had instructions on the fabrication of roadside bombs written on a chalkboard, Davis said. The military has also seized a number of weapon caches throughout the area, he said.
In a separate incident, the military announced Saturday that two US army soldiers were killed and one was wounded during a small arms skirmish with insurgents late Friday while transporting a detainee north of Baghdad, the military said Saturday.
A civilian and the detainee were also killed in the incident late Friday near Buhriz, about 60 kilometres north of Baghdad. Five Iraqi police were wounded, the military said.
At least 1,718 members of the US military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Karabilah’s streets were empty and one family including a man sitting in a plastic lawn chair with a dishdasha, or traditional Arab robe, was on a porch with a white flag hanging from the roof to alert US jets not to bomb the home.
The sporadic crackle of fire could be heard in the distance. Military officials said more than 100 people have fled the town, which has seen airstrikes and numerous clashes over the past two days. At least one home had one of its gates blown off.
US military intelligence officials believe the area is the main entry point used by extremist groups such as Abu Mussab Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq to smuggle foreign fighters into the country. Syria is under intense pressure from Washington and Baghdad to tighten control of its porous 610-kilometre border with Iraq.
On Thursday, a US general called Syria’s border the “worst problem” in terms of stemming the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq.
Davis said three US troops have been wounded since Operation Spear began Friday. The offensive is being waged by about 1,000 Marines and Iraqi forces, backed by main battle tanks. About 100 insurgents have also been captured, the military said.
Another campaign of similar size, Operation Dagger, was launched Saturday against insurgents operating in Anbar — this time targeting the marshy shores of a remote lake just north of Baghdad.
The region has been flush with insurgents in recent weeks.
Marines carried out June 11 airstrikes that killed about 40 militants after a nearly five-hour gunfight on the outskirts of Karabilah. Insurgents in the area also killed 21 people — beheading three of them — thought to be a group of missing Iraqi soldiers. The bodies were found June 10.
Operation Dagger, or Khanjar in Arabic, aims to uncover insurgent training camps and weapons caches in the southern part of the Lake Tharthar area in central Iraq, 85 kilometres northwest of Baghdad. The region was the focus of a major campaign in late March that killed more than 80 insurgents.
On March 23, US and Iraqi forces killed about 85 militants at a suspected training camp along Lake Tharthar.
That raid turned up booby-trapped cars, suicide-bomber vests, weapons and training documents. The insurgents included Iraqis, Filipinos, Algerians, Moroccans, Afghans and Arabs from neighbouring countries, officials said.
In Karabilah, Marines and Iraqi forces backed by main battle tanks fought their way into the town from the south encountering enemy fire almost immediately, Davis said.
US fighter aircraft on Friday dropped bombs and the tanks fired shells at insurgents holed up inside buildings. In other violence Saturday, insurgents killed at least four people in Baghdad, including two Iraqi soldiers and a 10-year-old girl, hospital and police officials said.
Twenty-one people — including an Iraqi journalist — were wounded in the attacks, which included suicide bombings and shootings. More than 1,100 people have been killed since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari’s Shiite-led government was announced in late April.
Marines carried out two major operations in the Qaim area last month, killing 125 insurgents in the first campaign, Operation Matador, and 14 in the second, Operation New Market. Eleven Marines were killed in those actions, designed to scatter and eradicate insurgents using the road from Damascus to Baghdad.
The new campaign began just before dawn in the desert wastes around Karabilah and Qaim, a lawless town west of Baghdad that squats at the crossroads of an insurgent smuggling route leading from Syria.
During Friday’s assault, troops captured about 100 foreign fighters and discovered at least one car bomb factory, said Col. Bob Chase, chief of operations for the Second Marine Division.
Iraqi troops did not participate in the earlier anti-insurgent offensives but Chase said this time they not only fought alongside Americans, but used their language skills and knowledge of the area to spot foreign fighters.
In other developments:
— More than 100 doctors and nurses in northern Baqouba who are angry at alleged abuse by Iraqi police called a three-day hospital strike. Emergency rooms will remain open.
— A farmer found seven corpses in a field in eastern Baghdad, police said. The men, wearing civilian clothes, were shot in the back of the head and their hands were bound.
— The US military announced that six people, including five children, were injured in a mortar and small arms fire attack Friday near a football field in northern Tal Alaf.
