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Fierce Combat Kills at Least 27
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-11-15 00:41
Fierce battles between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces killed at least
27 people Monday in Baqouba and south of Baghdad — the latest in a wave of
clashes that has swept Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland even as American forces
move against the last remaining pockets of resistance in Fallujah.
A
convoy of ambulances and relief supplies trying to enter Fallujah was forced to
turn back because the fighting made it too dangerous, the head of the Iraqi Red
Crescent said. The Red Crescent and Red Cross have been unable to gain access to
people inside Fallujah during more than a week of violence.
Even as the fighting continued in the city, Iraq's interior minister declared
victory in the offensive. "Fallujah is no more a safe haven for the terrorists
and killers. This thing is over," Falah Hassan al-Naqib told reporters in
Baghdad.
Elsewhere, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's office confirmed that two of his
female relatives who were kidnapped last week have been released. Allawi's
cousin, Ghazi Allawi, 75, his cousin's wife and his cousin's pregnant
daughter-in-law were abducted at gunpoint last Tuesday in western Baghdad's
Yarmouk neighborhood. There was no word on the cousin.
On Sunday, U.S. Marines found the disemboweled body of a Western woman
wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket on a street in Fallujah. The woman could not
be immediately identified, but the only Western women known to have been taken
hostage are Briton Margaret Hassan, 59, director of CARE international in Iraq,
and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq.
Outside Fallujah, U.S. and Iraqi troops and insurgents clashed in several
cities across a belt of central and northern Iraq, including Baqouba, Ramadi,
Mosul and Suwayrah, south of Baghdad.
In Baqouba, insurgents attacked 1st Infantry Division soldiers with
rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire near a traffic circle and police
station, officials said.
During the fighting, U.S. troops came under fire from a mosque, the U.S.
military said. Iraqi security stormed the mosque and found rocket-propelled
grenades, mortar rounds and other weapons and ammunition, the statement said.
The fighting took place in Baqouba and neighboring town of Buhriz, about 35
miles northeast of Baghdad. American aircraft dropped two 500 pound bombs on an
insurgent position.
A U.S. military spokesman said at least 20 insurgents were killed, although
battle reports were still being assessed.
Mohammed Zayad of the Baqouba hospital said nine Iraqis — ane attacker, a
policeman and seven civilians — were killed and 11 Iraqis were injured in the
fighting. It was not clear to what extent his count overlapped with the U.S.
count of 20 insurgents killed. Four 1st Infantry Division soldiers were wounded,
although two of them returned to duty, the military said.
In Suwayrah, gunmen carried out near-simultaneous attacks on a police station
and an Iraqi National Guard headquarters. The assault came after an attacker
drove an explosives-laden car at the headquarters. Police shot the driver before
he could detonate his bomb, police said.
Seven Iraqi police and national guardsmen were killed in the Suwayrah
fighting, including Maj. Hadi Refeidi, the director of the Suwayrah police
station, officials said.
The week-old offensive in Fallujah, the city that came to symbolize
resistance to the U.S.-led occupation, has left at least 38 American troops and
six Iraqi soldiers dead. The number of U.S. troops wounded is now 275, though
more than 60 have returned to duty. U.S. officials estimated more than 1,200
insurgents have been killed.
On Monday, U.S. forces resumed heavy airstrikes and artillery fire, with
warplanes making between 20-30 bombing sorties in Fallujah and surrounding
areas. U.S. ground forces were trying to corner the remaining resistance in the
city.
American forces had attacked a bunker complex Sunday in the city's south
where they discovered a network of steel-reinforced tunnels and underground
bunkers. The tunnels connected a ring of facilities filled with weapons, an
anti-aircraft artillery gun, bunk beds and a truck, according to a statement
from the U.S. military.
Civilians seeking medical care were told through loudspeakers and
leaflets to contact U.S. troops.
In Geneva, the Baghdad spokesman for the International Committee of the Red
Cross, Ahmed Rawi, said Monday an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy of four ambulances
and four trucks carrying supplies reached Fallujah General Hospital on the
city's outskirts, but was unable to go further.
Ismail al-Haqi, director of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, said he had
decided it was too dangerous for the convoy to proceed into the city.
"I can't sacrifice the lives of the volunteers; it is very dangerous to go
inside Fallujah now and we preferred not to enter," al-Haqi said.
He denied an earlier statement by the Red Crescent that U.S. forces and Iraqi
officials turned back the convoy.
Rawi said there were no patients at Fallujah General Hospital and that
medical supplies there had gone unused throughout the violence because no one
was able to reach the facility. The hospital is in U.S.-Iraqi hands, across the
Euphrates River from the main part of the city.
In an interview with The Associated Press, the Marine general who designed
the ground attack on Fallujah said it had gone far more quickly than expected
and that troops had fought their way across the city in just six days.
Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski on Sunday described the ground war as a "flawless
execution of the plan we drew up. We are actually ahead of schedule."
Al-Naqib, the Iraqi interior minister, vowed a crackdown on those who incite
attacks on Iraqi security forces or urge them to leave their positions — a
likely reference to hard-line clerics who say Iraqis should not join the
security forces.
"These have committed the crime of great treason, great treason to the
country," al-Naqib said. "What's going on is a plan ... to divide this country
and thrust it into a civil war ... There will be no laxity with these."
Insurgent attacks escalated elsewhere in Sunni Muslim areas of Iraq.
In the insurgent-heavy city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of the capital, heavy
fighting erupted on Monday between militants and U.S. forces, residents said.
Sunni clerics at several mosques called on residents to kick out bands of
armed men who have come from outside the city, claiming that the clashes inside
Ramada are having a negative impact on the economic situation of citizens.
In Mosul, where an uprising broke out last week in support of the Fallujah
defenders, a suicide driver tried to ram his bomb-laden vehicle into a U.S.
convoy, the military said. He missed but set off the explosives, wounding five
soldiers, four of them lightly. A second car then tried to approach the same
patrol, but the troops opened fire, killing the driver, the military said.
Militants raided two Mosul police stations Sunday, killing at least six Iraqi
National Guards and wounding three others before Iraqi security forces regained
control of both stations.
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