U.S. Leads Attack At Syrian Border
The American military launched a major new offensive of about 2,500 Marines, soldiers and sailors near the Syrian border on Saturday, aimed at destroying an al Qaeda in Iraq network in the region, the U.S. command said.
The "Operation Steel Curtain" offensive in the town of Husaybah in the western province of Anbar will remove insurgents and their "safe houses" from the area to improve security there ahead of Iraq's parliamentary election on Dec. 15, the military said.
The offensive included an unspecified number of Iraqi forces. Husaybah is located near the border town of Qaim and is about 200 miles west of Baghdad.
The U.S. military said it had killed five senior al Qaeda in Iraq figures during an airstrike last Saturday in Husaybah. The five, including at least one North African, were responsible for bombings against U.S. and Iraqi forces, the announcement said.
"Operation Steel Curtain marks the first large-scale employment of multiple battalion-sized units of Iraqi army forces in combined operations with coalition forces in the last year," the military said in a statement.
The election, an important step in Iraq's democratic reforms, and the training of new Iraqi forces, are aimed at one day allowing U.S. forces to begin withdrawing from Iraq. Operation Steel Curtain included scout platoons recruited from the Qaim region, the U.S. command said.
It said al Qaida in Iraq, the country's most feared insurgent group, has used the Husaybah region's porous borders to smuggle foreign fighters, money and equipment into the country to be used in its attacks against the Iraqi people and coalition forces.
The military also said that insurgents continue to threaten to kill residents of Husaybah who work with U.S. or Iraqi forces in the region as "collaborators."
Last month, two other U.S. offensives, Operation Iron Fist and Operation River Gate, were conducted in and around Anbar towns such as Qaim, Karabila, Hadithah and Haqlaniyah.
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The offensive is part of a larger ongoing U.S. military operation designed to deny al Qaeda in Iraq the ability to operate in the Euphrates River Valley, which stretches through Anbar province, and to establish a joint permanent security presence along the Syrian border.
The Syrian border mission follows warnings from al Qaeda in Iraq Friday telling foreign diplomats to flee Iraq after announcing it will put to death two Moroccan Embassy employees who were kidnapped last month. Insurgents killed 11 Iraqi security troops in separate attacks north of Baghdad.
The warning was contained in a statement posted on an Islamist Web site in the name of al-Qaida in Iraq, which also claimed responsibility for the July kidnap-slaying of two envoys from Algeria and one from Egypt as well as the abduction and beheading of numerous foreign hostages.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb has hit an Iraqi convoy about 130 miles north of Baghdad, killing five police commandos and wounding four others. The incident follows a militant attack today about 35 miles north of Baghdad. At a police checkpoint, insurgents fired mortar rounds, then arrived in eight cars and opened fire, a police officer said.
At least six policemen were killed and 10 wounded in the ensuing gunbattle, and it was not immediately known if any militants were hurt, the officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of concern for his own safety.
Sunni-led insurgents also fired a mortar round that struck a home outside the capital, killing a child, as Shiites began celebrating a major Muslim holiday.
The al Qaeda threat to foreign diplomats was contained in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site. It was posted one day after the country's most feared terror group announced it had condemned two Moroccan embassy employees to death.
"We are renewing our threat to those so-called diplomatic missions who have insisted on staying in Baghdad and have not yet realized the repercussions of such a challenge to the will of the mujahedeen," the Friday statement said.
The statement added, "Let them know that there is no difference in our judgment between the head of a diplomatic mission and the lowest-level employee."
Last July, al Qaeda in Iraq kidnapped and killed two Algerian and one Egyptian diplomat in an apparent campaign to prevent Arab and Islamic countries from strengthening ties to the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. Senior envoys from Pakistan and Bahrain also escaped kidnap attempts. More than 40 diplomatic missions are currently in Iraq.
The latest al Qaeda statement appeared as majority Shiites began the three-day religious holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which ends a month of fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.