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US keeps the heat up in preparation for Iraqi vote
The American military said on Thursday that four American servicemen Wednesday, including two marines who were killed during sweeps aimed at disrupting insurgent networks in Anbar Province prior to the Dec. 15 elections.The two marines, both members of Regimental Combat Team 8, Second Marine Division, were killed by small-arms fire in separate incidents in Falluja, 30 miles west of Baghdad, the military said. In addition, an Army soldier died on Wednesday from a gunshot wound north of Baghdad, but the military gave no further details and did not specify how the soldier received the wound. The fourth death on Wednesday was that of a marine assigned to the Second Marine Aircraft Wing of II Marine Expeditionary Force, who died in a noncombat-related vehicle accident near Taqaddum, outside of Falluja, the military said. About 2,000 American troops and 500 Iraqi Army soldiers continued their push on Thursday to root out rebels in the rural region east of Hit, 100 miles west of Baghdad, officials said. According to the American command, the area houses shops for the manufacture of car bombs and the kind of homemade explosives that have caused thousands of casualties since the 2003 invasion. There have been no casualties since that operation began on Wednesday, a Marine spokesman said. Beginning last spring, American and Iraqi commanders in Anbar have conducted many large-scale assaults on towns along the Euphrates in an effort to destroy the insurgency's system of smuggling routes, supply lines and safe houses for its fighters, both foreign and Iraqi. On Thursday, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a senior military spokesman in Baghdad, credited the sweeps with sharply reducing the number of insurgent attacks around the country, including suicide bombings and incidents involving homemade bombs. There were 50 suicide bombings in Iraq in October and 19 in November, he said. Over the same period, the number of concealed bombs that either exploded or were discovered and cleared fell to 1,329, from 1,869, he said. The drop in the number of attacks is "a direct result of the effectiveness of our operations against the Zarqawi network," General Lynch said at a news conference here, referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist whom American commanders have declared their No. 1 enemy in Iraq. But insurgents also carried out some of their deadliest suicide attacks of the year in November, including a suicide car bomb that exploded outside the main hospital in the town of Mahmudiya, killing at least 30, and suicide bomb attacks on two Shiite mosques in the Kurdish town of Khanaqin, which together killed at least 70. Several months ago, American officials pointed to another drop in suicide attacks - from 70 in May to 40 in August - to indicate the success of their strategy in western Iraq. But then the number of suicide bombings began to climb again - to 46 in September and 50 in October. Similarly, while the number of incidents involving hidden bombs has dropped in the past two months, there has been an overall increase since June, when 1,170 were found. In Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, 20 to 30 insurgents gathered in a marketplace in the northern part of the city on Thursday morning and fired mortar rounds at the provincial government building before disappearing in the crowd, Ahmed Faisal, a traffic policeman in Ramadi, said in a telephone interview. At the time of the incident, tribal sheiks were scheduled to gather for a meeting at the building. There were no reported casualties. Lt. Muhammad al-Obaidi of the local police was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that at least four mortar rounds had fallen near the American base on the eastern edge of the city, causing no casualties. In an Internet posting, the group led by Mr. Zarqawi, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, claimed responsibility for what it called "the new blessed attack" against "the Americans and their midget followers," a term the group uses to describe what it regards as Iraqi collaborators, including the country's security forces. But American officials and an official from Iraq's Interior Ministry denied that there was a coordinated guerrilla attack on Thursday and said only one rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a joint American-Iraqi observation post. "There were no signs of any significant insurgent activity anywhere in the city," an American statement said. "That is all. No other attacks." Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-12-02 |
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