World

U.S. Goes After Sunni Insurgents

October 13, 2004 / 6:46 AM EDT / CBS/AP

U.S. troops went on the offensive from the gates of Baghdad to the Syrian border Tuesday, pounding Sunni insurgent positions from the air and supporting Iraqi soldiers in raids on mosques suspected of harboring extremists.

American and Iraqi forces launched the operations ahead of Ramadan, expected to start at week's end, in an apparent attempt at preventing a repeat of the insurgent violence that took place at the start of last year's Muslim holy month.

Clashes broke out in a string of militant strongholds from Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, northward along the Euphrates Valley to the Syrian border town of Qaim — all major conflict areas.

Some of the sharpest exchanges took place in Hit, 90 miles northwest of Baghdad, where residents and hospital officials said U.S. aircraft attacked two sites, killing two people and wounding five. The U.S. command had no comment.

U.S. helicopters fired on a mosque in Hit on Monday and set it ablaze after the military said insurgents opened fire on Marines from the sanctuary. Scattered clashes were reported overnight, killing at least two Iraqis and wounding 15, hospital official said.

Insurgents attacked an Iraqi National Guard outpost east of Qaim Tuesday, the U.S. military said. The local hospital reported 15 to 20 people were killed.

In other developments:

In Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, insurgents opened fire from a mosque after a car bomb exploded in front of a U.S. convoy, the military said. One U.S. soldier was killed and nine were wounded, the military said. City hospitals reported at least two Iraqis killed and 18 wounded.

A bomb exploded Tuesday outside the complex of the British and American consulates in the southern city of Basra, police said. There were no casualties reported, said Police Capt. Mushtaq Taleb.

Three Bulgarian soldiers were injured in a mortar attack on their base in Iraq, the Ministry of Defense in Sofia said Tuesday. The incident occurred late Monday at the Bulgarian Camp Kilo in the central Iraqi city of Karbala, the ministry said.

The chairman of a Turkish construction company whose employees were released by kidnappers said Tuesday his firm will not withdraw from Iraq because it was unclear whether the abductions were politically motivated.

While U.S. inspectors now say Iraq lacked any nuclear weapons program before the war, the International Atomic Energy Agency is warning that Iraqi equipment that could have been used in a bomb program has gone missing.

Seventy miles west of Baghdad, Iraqi troops backed by U.S. soldiers and Marines raided seven mosques in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, arresting a locally prominent member of a clerical association and three other people. They also seized bomb-making materials and "insurgent propaganda" in the mosques, U.S. officials said.

In Baghdad, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical group suspected of links to the insurgency, condemned the mosque raids as an example of alleged American hostility toward Islam.

"I think there is a religious ideology that drives the American troops," said the association's official spokesman, Mohammed Bashar al-Faydhi. "President Bush has said at the beginning of the war that this is a `crusade,"' he said, referring to the Christian attacks on Muslims in the Middle Ages.

Angry Ramadi residents accused the Americans of breaking down doors and violating the sanctity of mosques.

"This cowboy behavior cannot be accepted," said cleric Abdullah Abu Omar. "The Americans seem to have lost their senses and have gone out of control."

However, the raids followed a surge in insurgent attacks in Ramadi, and the U.S. command accused the militants of violating the sanctity of the mosques by using them for military purposes. Marine spokesman Maj. Francis Piccoli said U.S. troops provided backup for the Iraqi soldiers but did not enter the mosques.

In Fallujah, the focal point for Sunni resistance, residents reported explosions and clashes on the eastern edge of the city Tuesday afternoon. At least five people were killed and four wounded in the blasts, according to Fallujah General Hospital. The victims were reportedly traveling in a truck and two cars on a highway outside the city when they came under fire. The U.S. command issued no statement.

The renewed activity around Fallujah followed a pair of pre-dawn airstrikes, which the U.S. command said targeted hideouts and meeting places of the feared Tawhid and Jihad, the terrorist group responsible for numerous kidnappings and beheadings of foreign hostages.

One of the airstrikes flattened a well known Fallujah restaurant and the other destroyed a building in another part of the city. Five people were killed and two were wounded in the two attacks, hospital officials reported.

Tuesday's airstrikes in Fallujah were the first in four days and occurred as Iraqi officials were in talks with city representatives to restore government control, which disintegrated after the Marines ended a three-week siege in late April.

Since then the city has fallen under the control of hardline Islamist clerics and their armed followers, who defended Fallujah against the Marines. Both sides have said they were close to an agreement but that several details remain unresolved, including how Iraqi forces would enter the city.

The attacks appear to be designed partly to make life so hard for the civilians that they will turn on Tawhid and Jihad.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and White House officials have said recently that they plan to use a mix of diplomacy and military force to try to regain control of dozens of key cities from insurgents before elections planned for January.

Last week, the government struck a deal with Shiite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to lay down their weapons and allow Iraqi forces to take control of the Sadr City district of Baghdad.

On Tuesday, hundreds of al-Sadr's fighters from his Mahdi Army lined up at police stations to hand in weapons in return for cash. Some of the weapons appeared to be old, and it seemed unlikely that the Mahdi Army would surrender all its arms.