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| Iraq-Jordan |
| 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi Troops Sweep Into City of Tall Afar |
| 2005-09-03 |
| TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 2 -- It was a clear and quiet dusk, with only the call to prayer echoing from minarets across this city, when a roadside bomb blasted an M1-A1 Abrams tank, shaking nearby buildings and filling the indigo sky with a plume of black smoke. Crackling small-arms fire clanged off the damaged vehicle from an adjacent house. U.S. soldiers answered with increasingly violent volleys -- .50-caliber machine gun bursts, tank rounds and a TOW missile -- but the shots from inside the house kept coming. Finally, an ear-splitting succession of five rounds from the tank's big gun reduced the building to flaming rubble and lit the empty streets with white sparks from exploding power transformers. In the largest urban assault since the siege of Fallujah last November, more than 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops entered this northern city before dawn Friday. But the 45-minute firefight at day's end suggested that the insurgents who have controlled much of Tall Afar for almost a year would not relinquish it easily. "We knew they were going to fight," said Pfc. Johnny Lara, a machine gunner from Blue Platoon, Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, who watched the clash with a reporter from a rooftop about 100 yards away. "Now it's a fight." During the course of the day, at least 30 insurgents were killed as U.S. troops conducted house-to-house searches in the baking sun. Apache attack helicopters that circled the city of 250,000 all day killed 27 people, including eight who were attempting to conceal roadside bombs in old tires, commanders said. No American or Iraqi army casualties were reported. Set on an old smuggling trail that winds though pastoral plains about 40 miles from the Syrian border, Tall Afar is a key logistics hub for insurgents operating across northern Iraq, military officials say. Like the string of towns a few hundred miles to the south in Anbar province, where Marines have launched a half-dozen offensives since early May, Tall Afar is considered a staging point for operations essential to sustaining an insurgency, such as trafficking of men and arms and providing safe accommodations for fighters. More at link |
| Posted by:Captain America |
| #7 I just have to laugh at what Raj and GK said... I am glad some of us still can find humor amid this rough time. Sometimes laughter is the best medicine. |
| Posted by: Soliderwife Robin 2005-09-03 23:42 |
| #6 ....Pfc. Johnny Lara.... who watched the clash with a reporter.... Sigh.... if only the clash had actually been with a reporter.... |
| Posted by: GK 2005-09-03 09:41 |
| #5 It was a clear and quiet dusk, Since 'It was a dark and stormy night' was already taken... |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-09-03 09:28 |
| #4 Tall Afar sounds like a city in a Tolkein book. |
| Posted by: Ms Sheenan 2005-09-03 07:27 |
| #3 Shoot Shep, took me a second to figure out you weren't talking about taking out the WaPo building. Well we can imagine. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet O´ Doom 2005-09-03 04:55 |
| #2 True, be nice to see a couple of ac-130s raining hell onto the terrorzoids below followed by large scale cluster bombing just to show these dipshit reporter types who really is in control |
| Posted by: Shep UK 2005-09-03 04:30 |
| #1 "the insurgents who have controlled much of Tall Afar for almost a year would not relinquish it easily" The admiration of WaPo assfucks Jonathan Finer and his editors is palpable. I hope we leave a smoking hole where this shithole stood and all of the terrs blown to very tiny bits. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-09-03 02:52 |