U.S. Troops Encircle Iraqi Village
U.S. forces encircled this Euphrates River village Saturday and frightened residents fled indoors as American helicopters hovered overhead, pressing forward with a major offensive near the Syrian border. Insurgents also staged a series of attacks elsewhere in Iraq, killing at least nine people.
The U.S. military said four more Marines were killed Wednesday, taking the total number of American troops killed during the weeklong campaign to nine. Marine commanders estimate more than 100 insurgents and foreign fighters have been killed during the offensive known as Operation Matador.
In Obeidi, scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the first days of the campaign, most of the village's 10,000 residents retreated indoors Saturday as a large convoy of mainly Marines, backed by tanks and helicopters, rolled across the river from Rommana.
Shelling began several hours later, damaging a house in the old part of the village, 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, and wounding five people, said Dr. Saadallah Anad at Obeidi General Hospital.
Anad said he did not know if U.S. weapons fire hit the house but helicopters were hovering over the area.
"We are living in a catastrophic situation. We don't have medicines or equipment, and we are worried that when our ambulances go out the Americans could strike at them," he said.
In other developments:
Marines were conducting a "cordon and search" operation in Obeidi, looking for insurgents, foreign fighters, weapons and bomb-making material, U.S. military spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool said. But he said Obeidi was not hit by air or artillery strikes on Saturday.
Rival groups of insurgents also are fighting among themselves in the nearby town of Qaim, trading mortar, rocket and machine gun fire almost nightly, Pool said. Residents acknowledged fighting in Qaim began before the U.S. offensive, characterizing it as tribal clashes.
The campaign, the largest since insurgents were forced from Fallujah six months ago, is aimed at allies of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose terror network has claimed responsibility for scores of bombings, ambushes and kidnappings in Iraq.
Also Saturday, Iraqi soldiers backed by U.S. forces captured 52 men suspected of insurgent activities in a raid in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Haider al-Tamimi told Associated Press Television News.
Iraqi soldiers also raided the Sunni Muslim Sheik Nasar Mosque after midday prayers in central Baghdad, arresting eight members of a suspected militant cell, including their leader, known as Abu Huthaifa, said police Lt. Col. Foad Asaad.
Weapons and ammunition also were confiscated during the arrests of the eight men, who police said were wanted in connection with multiple attacks and assassinations.
The push around Obeidi came a day after Marine warplanes launched air strikes that killed 12 insurgents manning a checkpoint east of Husaybah and targeted a suspected terrorist safe house in Karabilah, also near Obeidi and the Syrian border.
The remote desert region is a haven for foreign combatants who slip across the border along ancient smuggling routes and collect weapons to use in some of Iraq's deadliest attacks, according to the U.S. military.
Residents said U.S. troops were blocking the main road linking nearby Obeidi with safer areas to the east outside the field of operations.
Fighters armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades control the streets in Qaim, but Obeidi residents said they have seen no more gunmen in their village, where the U.S. military says it killed more than 50 insurgents the first night of the campaign.
"There is fear among the residents of Obeidi, but we don't think it (the village) has any military importance. There are no fighters in the village," said one resident, 35-year-old Khalaf Ali.
The four Marines were killed Wednesday when their troop transporter was struck by a bomb near Karabilah, a Marine statement said. The U.S. military announced previously that two other Marines had died and 14 were wounded in the same attack.
At least 1,620 U.S. military members have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The offensive comes amid a surge of militant attacks that have killed at least 430 people across Iraq since Iraq's first democratically elected government was announced April 28.
A car bomb targeted a police patrol in central Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least five Iraqis and injuring 12, most civilians, police said. The afternoon blast destroyed cars and set fire to a minibus. Shards of glass and pieces of flesh were strewn in the bloodstained street. Thick black smoke billowed into the sky.
Earlier Saturday, a roadside bomb exploded — apparently prematurely — in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, killing three Iraqi street cleaners and injuring four, police and hospital officials said.
Three police also were wounded, one seriously, when gunmen in two cars attacked them in a drive-by shooting near a gas station in western Baghdad, police Maj. Moussa Abdul Karim said.
In Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded when a joint army and police patrol passed by, killing a 10-year-old boy and wounding two Iraqi soldiers and a policeman, police Col. Wathiq Mohammed said. A car bomb in the same city injured three policemen, he said.
A suicide bomber detonated his vehicle near an Iraqi police patrol in central Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of the capital, wounding three policemen and a civilian, police Col. Mudhafar Mohammed said.
At least nine more Iraqis were killed Friday in a series of bombings, ambushes and other attacks. Separately, a gunfire exchange with U.S. forces in Mosul killed five Iraqi civilians and three suspected insurgents.
Operation Matador was launched in Qaim, a town of 50,000 people. Thousands have fled the area, pitching tents along sandblown desert highways or seeking shelter in schools and mosques in nearby towns. But U.S. forces said they have not entered Qaim since the first days of the offensive.