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Iraq-Jordan
US assault Sadr, Zarqawi strongholds across Iraq
2004-09-23
U.S troops struck at militant strongholds across Iraq on Wednesday, pounding insurgent positions in Baghdad and clashing with fighters in central and northern cities. The latest fighting came as terrorists claimed responsibility for killing American hostage Jack Hensley and detonated car bombs in Baghdad. Fighting was intense against Shiite militiamen in Baghdad's Sadr City. The sprawling slum is the base of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose followers have battled coalition forces for months. Al-Sadr, who commands support among Iraq's poorer Shiite Muslims, led a three-week uprising in Najaf against U.S. Marines that ended last month with a peace deal brokered by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Attacks by U.S. troops, backed by tanks and aircraft, killed 10 and wounded 92, hospital officials said. U.S. troops were searching for weapons and targeted "pockets of insurgents and terrorists" in the slum, the military said.

In other developments:
    • Clashes erupted in the central city of Samarra, where U.S. forces had earlier claimed success against militants waging a 17-month insurgency. At least one child was killed and five people wounded, police said.

    • Three U.S. soldiers were killed in separate incidents. One died in one of the car bombings; one was killed by a roadside bomb near Tikrit; a third died of wounds after an attack on a patrol in Mosul.

    • Suicide bombers set off two car bombs in Baghdad; one explosion killed six people.

    • Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, the spiritual leader of Tawhid and Jihad, the group that beheaded the two American hostages, was killed in an airstrike this month, his family and clerics said.

    • Al-Shami's group released a videotape that appeared on an Islamic Web Site purportedly showing the beheading of American hostage Jack Hensley. The man's identity could not be verified.

    • A terrorist group calling itself Jihad Organization claimed it had executed two Italian women. They had been in Iraq working for an aid agency. The kidnappers had demanded that Italy withdraw its 3,000 troops from Iraq.

    • The U.S. military charged two U.S. soldiers — Sgt. Michael Williams and Spc. Brent May — with murder in the deaths of three Iraqis. The two serve with the Army's 1st Cavalry Division and are based out of Fort Riley in Kansas. No details were released.
Posted by:Dan Darling

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