Dozens of insurgents were killed Saturday on the first day of Operation Steel Curtain, a U.S.-Iraqi military offensive near the Syrian border, military officials said. Marine company commander Capt. Conlon Carabine described the day as one long firefight full of sniper and machine gun fire. "With the exception of 30 minutes, it's been shooting or getting shot at all day," Carabine said.At least three Marines received minor wounds in the fighting, said U.S. military officials in Husayba, where much of the operation is centered. The offensive "marks the first large-scale employment of multiple battalion-sized units of Iraqi Army forces in combined operations with coalition forces" in Anbar province during the past year, the military said in a news release. The operation comes in the largely Sunni Muslim region in advance of Iraq's parliamentary election, set for December 15.
Sunni tribal leader Sheik Osama Jadaan denounced the offensive, The Associated Press reported. "We call all humanitarians and those who carry peace to the world to intervene to stop the repeated bloodshed in the western parts of Iraq," Jadaan told AP. "And we say to the American occupiers to get out and leave Iraq to the Iraqis."
Once a thriving trade city of some 30,000 people, Husayba has been largely deserted. A crossing into Syria there has been closed for more than a year, and Husayba's population now numbers just a few thousand.