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US troops crack down on armed resistance in Iraq
Jordan Times, 6/30/03
Iraqi children enjoy a swim on Sunday as temperature rose above 43 degrees
Celsius in Majjar, near Ammarah, 380km southeast of Baghdad, a town where
the first British soldiers were killed since the toppling of Saddam
Hussein. Returning British troops told people they wanted to help them
reestablish their community not punish them, but locals are still
reluctant to accept a troop presence in their town (photo by Faleh Kheiber/Reuters
)
BAGHDAD (Reuters) — US forces backed by aircraft and armoured vehicles launched an operation on Sunday to crack down on armed resistance in areas north of Baghdad where Saddam Hussein once enjoyed wide support.
Washington's top civilian official in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said US-led forces would suffer further casualties until Saddam loyalists were killed or captured. But US army commander Tommy Franks, who led the swift defeat of Iraq's army, said recent attacks on US troops did not “spoil the victory.”
US troops detained more than 60 people and seized weapons and military documents as part of the mission, called Operation Sidewinder, in areas from the Iranian border to the east to towns north of the capital.
“No coalition forces casualties were reported in the raids. Sidewinder is an ongoing operation,” US Central Command said in a statement.
In another statement, Central Command said 15 people were arrested and some weapons confiscated during raids in the city of Mosul in northern Iraq on Saturday. The raids targeted followers of a Wahabi Muslim fundamentalist leader, it said.
Soldiers also imposed tighter measures around military posts, US-led administration offices and ministry buildings in the city of five million, witnesses said. They also stepped up search operations for weapons and wanted Saddam loyalists.
In the latest of a series of hit-and-run attacks, an Iraqi civilian was killed and two US military police were wounded in Baghdad when an explosion targeted a US convoy.
US forces in mainly Sunni Muslim central Iraq have come under fire almost daily in recent weeks, despite ousting Saddam on April 9. Officers blame scattered remnants of Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitary force and his Baath Party for the attacks.
At least 22 Americans have been killed by hostile fire since US President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1. Some analysts have warned that the surge in attacks could lead to open revolt against the occupying forces.
“Will the problems in Iraq and the attacks spoil the victory achieved by the Americans? Of course not,” Franks, retiring commander of US Central Command, said after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.
`Brighter future'
“It is a certainty that the regime of Saddam Hussein is gone from Iraq... It is also a certainty that some 25 (million), maybe 26 million, Iraqis have a brighter future today than they had three or four months ago,” he said.
Saturday's deaths took to more than 200 the number of Americans who have died, both in combat and noncombat incidents, since US forces began the war in Iraq on March 20.
Bremer, top US civil administrator in Iraq, told BBC Television chances were “very high” Saddam would be caught.
“We will catch him. I think it is important that we either capture or kill him,” Bremer said.
He said remnants of Saddam's government still fighting would either be killed or captured.
“It is unfortunately the case, we will continue to take casualties. But there is no strategic threat to the coalition here,” Bremer said.
In Majjar, about 380km south of Baghdad, there was no sign on Sunday of British forces in the town where gunmen killed six British soldiers last week.
Britain's defence ministry in London said a force of 500 troops returned to Majjar on Saturday where commanders met a delegation of Shiite Muslim clerics and local dignitaries.
The troops told people they wanted to help them reestablish their community, not punish them, the ministry said.
Majjar residents said the force, which drove into the town in about 40 military vehicles, stayed for only three hours. The British informed town leaders they had no plans to stay, the residents said.
They said the force checked the police station where most of the soldiers died last Tuesday. At least four Iraqis were also killed in the shooting.
“The situation is stable here... We don't need the British,” Mohammad Al Shumari, a dignitary, said.
The Majjar killings were the first British deaths since the toppling of Saddam on April 9. Until last Tuesday the British occupation of southern Iraq, populated mainly by the country's majority Shiites who were oppressed by Saddam for a quarter of a century, had been largely peaceful.
US Senator Joseph Biden, an influential opposition Democrat member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Sunday an international force of up to 60,000 troops was needed in Iraq to halt the violence.
“I want to see French, German, I want to see Turkish patches on people's arms sitting on the street corners, standing there in Iraq,” Biden, who visited Iraq recently, told Fox television.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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