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Iraq-Jordan
US, British troops raid old Baathist retreat
2004-12-01
Hundreds of U.S. and British troops raided homes of insurgent suspects at first light on Wednesday in an area that was once a favored country retreat of Saddam Hussein's Baath party elite. Scottish soldiers from the Black Watch regiment and a force from the U.S. 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) cordoned off several km (miles) of the west bank of the Euphrates river, some 30 miles south of Baghdad, and were scouring villas and farms for Sunni Muslim militants and hidden stocks of weapons. This reporter with the U.S. Marines saw them position tanks across a main intersection to form one end of the cordon. The British troops, who included marine commandos, were using Warrior armored vehicles to seal their area of search. American high-speed riverboats went into action when a group of men tried to escape the area by water, U.S. officers said. U.S. and Iraqi troops rounded up 15 suspected militants during the operation, the military said in a statement, raising to 210 the number detained in the past eight days of raids.Hours later troops were still scouring date palm groves and farmland for signs of buried weapons.

Separately, an insurgent attempting to plant a roadside bomb along a highway through the area was killed when one of the two mortar rounds he was using exploded prematurely, the army said. A suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle in the same area, killing himself and wounding seven civilians, officials said. Following on from their assault last month on Sunni rebels in the city of Falluja, some 40 miles upstream, the latest operations are part of an effort to stifle the insurgency before an national election planned for the end of next month. British and American helicopters and U.S. jets were in the air in support, responding to occasional mortar rounds fired in the U.S. sector. About 50 Iraqi police commandos searched homes in the small nearby town of Jurf as-Sakher. In all, more than 400 men took part on the ground. "West of the river is a stronghold of the old regime, the summer homes of senior officials," said Lieutenant Colonel Bob Durkin of the Marines, who commands a base close to the nearby town of Iskandariya, on the east bank of the river.

U.S. commanders in the north of Babil province, which some have dubbed the "triangle of death" for its frequent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, believe wealthy former officials have helped plan and fund bomb and mortar attacks. Two Marines were killed by a roadside bomb near Iskandariya two nights ago and comrades involved in the raids said they were keen for revenge but frustrated by the difficulties of tracking down the culprits. Durkin said some more religiously inspired fighters, who look to the likes of Jordanian al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had come into the area since the offensive in Falluja.
Posted by:Dan Darling

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