World

U.S. Hits Insurgents Near Syria

May 9, 2005 / 1:07 PM EDT / CBS/AP

U.S. forces have launched an offensive against insurgents in western Iraq near the Syrian border, and about 75 militants were killed in the first 24 hours, the military said Monday.

It said the offensive, being conducted with U.S. air support in a desert area of Anbar province north of the Euphrates River, was targeting a sanctuary for foreign insurgents and a smuggling route.

The brief U.S. statement didn't say when the offensive by Marines, sailors and soldiers had begun, how many were included, or whether there had been any American casualties.

The Chicago Tribune reported Monday that more than 1,000 U.S. troops supported by fighter jets and helicopter gunships had attacked villages in and around Obeidi, a city near the Euphrates River in western Iraq not far from the Syrian border, on Sunday.

The report, by a journalist embedded with the U.S. forces, said the offensive "was seeking to uproot a persistent insurgency in an area that American intelligence indicated has become a haven for foreign fighters flowing in from Syria."

The Chicago Tribune said some of the U.S. forces were north of the Euphrates River, but most were stuck south of the waterway as engineers tried to build a pontoon bridge there Sunday.

The report quoted some Marines as saying that residents of one riverside town had turned off all their lights at night, apparently to warn neighboring towns of the approaching U.S. offensive. The reporter said the offensive was expected to last several days.

In other recent developments:

Monday's violence included a suicide car bomb in southern Baghdad that hit a checkpoint of two police vehicles at a busy intersection, said police Maj. Mousa Abdul Karim. Police first said nine policemen and an Iraqi civilian had been killed. But when Karim fully examined the destruction, he reduced the death toll, saying two policemen and one civilian had been killed and six policemen and three civilians wounded.

The worst of the weekend fighting occurred in Haditha, when insurgents occupied a civilian hospital and used gunfire, rocket-propelled grenades, a suicide car bomb and a roadside bomb to kill three U.S. Marines and a sailor, the military said. On Monday, the U.S. military provided new information about the four-hour battle in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. It said the insurgents used patients as human shields, even after one of their bombs set fire to the hospital. An unspecified number of militants were killed in the battle, the military said.

The U.S. military announced Monday that it had conducted several raids the previous day in and around Baghdad, detaining 13 suspected insurgents, some armed with rocket propelled grenades.

Two of the suspects were captured in a raid aimed at capturing the leader of a terror cell believed to have plotted the attempt to kill Allawi on April 20, the military said. Allawi narrowly escaped unhurt when a suicide car bomb exploded near a police checkpoint as his convoy drove him home. At least one policeman was killed and two were wounded, police said.

Recently, U.S. troops appear to have stepped up their attacks on suspected insurgent strongholds, including some near the Syrian border, where foreign militants may be entering the country to attack coalition forces.

For instance, on Sunday coalition forces killed six insurgents and detained 54 suspects in raids targeting terror group al Qaeda in Iraq in Qaim, a city near Obeidi, the U.S. military said.

Insurgent violence killed nine U.S. service members in Iraq over the weekend, raising the death toll to more than 300 from a torrent of insurgent attacks in Iraq since April 28, when a new Iraqi Cabinet was approved by parliament with seven positions undecided.

Those casualties included a U.S. soldier who was killed by gunfire in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, on Sunday, the military said.

On Sunday, Iraq's Shiite-dominated parliament filled five of the Cabinet's seven vacancies, including four with Sunni Arab ministers. But one of the Sunnis rejected his post on the grounds of tokenism, and that tarnished the Shiite premier's bid to include the disaffected minority believed to be driving Iraq's deadly insurgency.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who was sworn in as Allawi's replacement last week, is still struggling to fill two vacant posts on his Cabinet: deputy prime minister and human rights minister.

After being appointed Sunday to that latter post, Hashim Abdul-Rahman al-Shibli said he could not accept his appointment.

"Concentrating on sectarian identities leads to divisions in the society and state, and for that reason I respectfully decline the post," al-Shibli said at a news conference.

When complete, the new government was to include 17 Shiite ministers, eight Kurds, six Sunnis and a Christian. Three deputy premiers also have been named — one each for the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, with the fourth held open for a woman.

On Sunday, the Defense Ministry went to Saadoun al-Duleimi, a former lieutenant colonel in Saddam Hussein's General Security Directorate who left Iraq in 1984 and lived in exile in Saudi Arabia until Saddam's fall in April 2003. A moderate, he comes from a powerful Sunni tribe in Anbar province, the homeland of the insurgency.

The Oil Ministry was returned to Ibrahim al-Uloum, a Shiite who was accused of inexperience when he held the post in the first U.S.-picked Cabinet formed in the early months after the American-led invasion toppled Saddam.

The Kurdish environment minister, Narmin Othman, will act as human rights minister until a replacement is found, al-Jaafari's aides said.

Al-Jaafari pledged Sunday to take "all necessary measures" to restore security and said the government could impose martial law, if necessary, to fight the insurgents.