World

Border Battle Test For Iraqi Army

November 6, 2005 / 9:21 AM EST / CBS/AP

About 3,500 U.S. and Iraqi troops backed by jets launched a major attack Saturday against an insurgent-held town near the Syrian border, seeking to dislodge al Qaeda and its allies and seal off a main route for foreign fighters entering the country.

The U.S.-led operation includes about 1,000 Iraqi soldiers, and the offensive will serve as a major test of their capability to battle the insurgents, seen as essential to enabling Washington to draw down its 157,000-strong military presence.

The U.S.-led force sporadically fought militants armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and two American service members were wounded, according to The New York Times, which had a reporter embedded with U.S. forces.

Coalition forces supported by tanks and fighter jets dropped 500-pound bombs but met more resistance than expected from insurgents in the town of Husaybah and only managed to take control of several blocks by nightfall Saturday, the Times reported.

At least two U.S. service members were wounded by sporadic enemy fire down alleyways as U.S.-led forces advanced in the town searching house by house, the report said.

U.S. officials describe Husaybah as the key to controlling the volatile Euphrates River valley of western Iraq and dislodging al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Thunderous explosions shook Husaybah early Saturday as U.S. Marines and Iraqi scouts, recruited from pro-government tribes from the area, fought their way into western neighborhoods of the town, 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, residents said.

Throughout the day, U.S. jets launched at least nine airstrikes, according to a U.S. Marine statement.

The coalition forces sometimes found it hard to spot insurgents hiding in the town's 4,000 homes and called in support from Abrams tanks and fighter jets, the Times reported.

But the soldiers also discovered that many families had fled Husaybah during the past several weeks, having been tipped off about the offensive ahead of time or having assumed that one was likely in the insurgent stronghold, the Times reported.

In related developments:

NATO has started training officers in the new Iraqi army, reversing a policy put in place by the U.S. in 2003, reports CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey.

A U.S. Army soldier working with Task Force Baghdad was killed by small-arms fire south of the capital on Friday, the military said. The death raised to at least 2,043 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In another attack near the Abu Ghraib detention center, police say rebels fired a mortar round that missed an American base but hit a village home. One child was killed and the mother and another child were injured.

Late Thursday, a U.S. soldier also died near Talil, 170 miles southeast of Baghdad, the military said. The death, apparently of non-hostile causes, brought to at least 2,038 the number of U.S. military service members who have died since the Iraq conflict began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In Baghdad, Fakhri al-Qaisi, a prominent Sunni politician running on a hardline ticket was shot Saturday as he was driving home. Doctors at Yarmouk Hospital reported him in critical condition.

Suspected insurgents also shot and killed Tarijk Hasan, a former colonel in the Iraqi air force, as he drove through Baghdad on Thursday, said police Capt. Talib Thamir.

11 members of a Kurdish Shiite family, including an infant, were killed and three wounded when gunmen sprayed their minibus with automatic weapons' fire northeast of Baghdad, police said.

U.S. commanders hope the Husaybah offensive, code-named "Operation Steel Curtain," will restore control of western Anbar province ahead of the parliamentary election Dec. 15 and enable Sunni Arabs there to vote.

Sunni Arabs form the vast majority of the insurgents, and U.S. officials hope that a strong Sunni turnout next month will encourage many of them to lay down arms and join the political process.

However, some Sunni Arab politicians and tribal leaders complained that the Husaybah operation was endangering civilians in the overwhelmingly Sunni area and could lead to greater instability throughout Sunni sections of the country.

"We call all humanitarians and those who carry peace to the world to intervene to stop the repeated bloodshed in the western parts of Iraq," said Sheik Osama Jadaan, a Sunni tribal leader. "And we say to the American occupiers to get out and leave Iraq to the Iraqis."

Husaybah, a poor Sunni Arab town of about 30,000 people, is the first stop in a network of communities that the U.S. military suspects al Qaeda of using to smuggle fighters, weapons and explosives from Syria down the Euphrates valley to Baghdad and other cities.

Many Husaybah residents are believed to fled the town after weeks of fighting between Iraqi tribes that support the insurgents and those that back the government.

The U.S. military says foreign fighters are only a small percentage of the insurgent ranks, which also include supporters of Saddam Hussein and Sunni Arabs opposed to the Americans and their Shiite and Kurdish allies.

However, foreign Islamic extremists are blamed for many of the spectacular suicide attacks that have killed hundreds of Iraqis in recent months. And foreign extremists are seen as more likely to continue the fight regardless of whether Iraqi Sunnis gain a measure of political power in the coming vote.

Most Sunni Arabs boycotted the Jan. 30 election of Iraq's current interim parliament, but many members of the minority voted in the Oct. 15 referendum that adopted the country's new constitution. Many Sunnis also plan to vote in the Dec. 15 ballot, hoping to increase the low number of seats they control in the National Assembly now dominated by Shiites and Kurds.