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U.S. Troops Lay Seige to Iraqi City
Despite criticism from Turkey and Shiite leaders, U.S. commanders insisted they will the maintain their blockade of Tal Afar for as long as it takes to subdue what they said were foreign fighters holed up there. The campaign was part of a recently launched American effort to restore government authority to lawless areas of the country — either through negotiation or by force. "We are going to apply the necessary pressure to make sure that we are able to root out the enemy," said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, spokesman for the Army's Task Force Olympia. "How long it takes is really dependent on them."But the siege of Tal Afar, which the Americans describe as a hub for militants smuggling fighters and arms from Syria, was criticized from within and outside Iraq. A leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, said the Americans' use of heavy force in the city caused "catastrophes" that could have been avoided if Iraqis were in charge of security. "Since the first day after (Saddam Hussein's) regime collapsed, Tal Afar had terrorist groups, and this is not new," al-Hakim told The Associated Press on Friday. "The new thing is that the military operations are huge." Al-Hakim leads the biggest Shiite political party in Iraq and is close to Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Turkey also said the United States should end its military operations in Tal Afar quickly, saying the attacks have caused casualties among the mostly ethnic Turks living there. Turkey has asked U.S. officials "not to harm the civilian population and avoid using excessive and non-selective force," Foreign Ministry spokesman Namik Tan said, according to the semiofficial Anatolia news agency. Posted by: Fred 2004-09-10 |
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