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| Iraq-Jordan |
| US fight insurgents for control of Iraqi town |
| 2005-09-06 |
| he American military recently moved into this small town 10 miles south of Falluja, one of the most violent locales in Iraq, to secure it for the coming elections, and the insurgents took all of a day to respond. They fired a rocket that missed the Americans and landed instead in a nearby playground, killing a 12-year-old boy and wounding eight other children. "We were playing football," Ahmed Hamad Ali, also 12, said from his hospital bed the next day. "They made a big bombing." Some residents are directing their anger not at the insurgents but at the marines, whose arrival, they say, drew the attack. "They are like two people chasing each other," Baha Abbod, 28, a teacher. It is hardly an unknown reaction in Iraq, where many civilians have been killed and wounded in cross-fire. But the military is bracing for a surge of situations like this one as American and Iraqi forces race to establish security for the referendum on the new Iraqi constitution to be held on Oct. 15. "Security preparations in support of the referendum are under way throughout Iraq," said Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, a military spokesman in Baghdad. The Marine operation was created to re-establish the presence of the Iraqi police in this town and a nearby village, Ameriya, which sits on the Euphrates River south of Falluja. The area is dominated by Sunni Arabs, who have balked at joining the Kurds and most Shiite factions in accepting the proposed constitution. Faris and Ameriya have been without police officers since February, when the police force collapsed in the face of withering attacks by insurgents, who then used the communities as safe havens from which to mount their attacks, Marine officers said, and to intimidate civilians. The roads from Falluja to Faris are pockmarked by craters left by makeshift bombs - improvised explosive devices, in military jargon - and on the wall at one checkpoint a scrawl in black paint urges American troops to stay alert: "Someone out there wants to kill you. Are you going to give them the chance?" A few minutes after driving past the sign, Sgt. Tim Lawson, 24, from Shaver Lake, Calif., swerved his armored Humvee onto the shoulder as he pointed across the road to an upturned chunk of asphalt. "There's a possible I.E.D. there," he said. Faris started out as a planned community built in the 1980's to house 30,000 engineers and others who worked in nearby munitions factories; those have been converted to construction facilities. The marines set up headquarters in an abandoned building here and in a new house in Ameriya. For a few days they worked with no air-conditioning in 115-degree heat, with little running water and exposure to higher buildings nearby. They surrounded their buildings with giant dirt-filled wire mesh containers called Hescos and posted lookouts on the roofs. A contingent of newly trained Iraqi troops is with the marines, building patrol experience, and they appeared poised and enthusiastic in their new uniforms and American-made body armor. "Psst," Mustafa Kamil, 24, one of the Iraqi team leaders, said to another soldier as they moved through Ameriya in a staggered formation. "Replace me here, quickly." He was a soldier in Saddam Hussein's army, earning about $2 a month in dinars, and after a spell cleaning streets during the start of the war, he joined the new Iraqi Army in April of last year. As an officer, he earns more than $300 a month. He said he worried that the 24 Iraqi soldiers who had arrived in Ameriya would not be able to hold the area when the marines left. Ultimately, the marines say, they want to turn these communities over to the Iraqi police, who may face the greatest danger. Perhaps as a warning, insurgents bombed the empty police station in Ameriya. The marines say they feel welcome in Faris and Ameriya, compared with the hostility they sensed in some other Iraqi locales where they established camps. Cpl. Brian Andrews, 24, from Austin, Tex., said the townsfolk were "very accepting of the coalition forces, at least to the naked eye." But the rocket attack, which struck on the last weekend of August, devastated many in Faris. Younis H. Johan, assistant director of the town's hospital, said the rocket had killed Omar Muaid, 12, whose chest and abdomen had been ripped open by the blast. He died 10 minutes after arriving at the hospital. Eight others were wounded, four of them significantly, Mr. Johan said. "We had casualties before, but during the last month, when U.S. troops came to the area, there has started to be more," he said. "I expect a rise, pressure on the hospital." Mr. Abbod, the teacher, says that residents who have family elsewhere will leave until the situation improves, and that even some grim places now seem attractive. His neighbor, he said, has gone to Falluja. At the town's hospital on Aug. 29 , a Marine captain visited one of the boys wounded in the attack and vowed to find the insurgents who had fired the rocket. But as the boy's father, Qutaiba Fajir, 42, a officer in the Iraqi Army, watched the Marine officer walk from the room, he said, "We hope they leave." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 Ya got that right, docob. Pink through and through these whiners are. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2005-09-06 11:44 |
| #2 "We hope they leave." Yup. Get rid of the sheepdogs. Then the wolves will be sure to leave you alone. (see Whittle's latest essay) |
| Posted by: docob 2005-09-06 08:40 |
| #1 New York Times. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2005-09-06 07:30 |