Iraq Rebel Attack Kills 23, Frees Inmates (more info)

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Guerrillas overwhelmed an Iraqi police station west of Baghdad on Saturday, meeting little resistance as they went room to room shooting police in a bold, well-organized assault that killed 23 people and freed dozens of prisoners, officials said.

The fierce, well-coordinated daylight attack — unprecedented in its scale — raised questions whether Iraqi police and defense forces are ready to battle insurgents as the U.S. military pulls back from the fight in advance of the November U.S. presidential election. It also underscored the tenacity of a resistance that continues despite the Dec. 13 arrest of Saddam Hussein.

The attack occurred at the end of a bloody week in which about 100 people were killed in suicide bombings at a police station in Iskandariyah and an army recruiting center in Baghdad. Those attacks as well as the Fallujah raid suggest a campaign by insurgents to strike at key institutions of the U.S.-backed Iraqi administration.

Iraqi police stations have been frequently targeted by insurgents but never by so many gunmen in such a well-coordinated and well-executed assault.

Before the attack, the gunmen set up checkpoints and blocked the road leading to the police station, but residents did not notify police, Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Kadhum Ibrahim said in Baghdad. Nearby storeowners were warned not to open Saturday morning, one shopkeeper in Fallujah said.

The battle left 17 policemen, two civilians and four attackers dead. At least 37 people were wounded, nearly all police. Two wounded attackers were captured, but the rest escaped.

One wounded policeman, Qais Jameel, said he heard the attackers speaking a foreign language that he speculated was Farsi. Rumors were circulating that a Shiite Muslim militia with ties to Iran, the Badr Brigade, was behind the attack on this Sunni town.

Police complained they had only small arms — nothing larger than an automatic rifle in the face of dozens of fighters armed with heavy machine guns, hand grenades and rocket-propelled grenades. No U.S. forces took part in the battle.

The United States wants the police, civil defense forces and the military to take the front line against the persistent guerrilla war when U.S. administrators hand power over to a new Iraqi government on June 30.

U.S. troops will take a lower profile, pulling out of most towns. But their continued presence in the country would likely mean the insurgency, led by Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign Islamic fighters, also will continue its campaign of violence.

Already, guerrillas have launched a stepped-up series of bloody attacks against the still rebuilding Iraqi security forces. Earlier this week, back-to-back suicide bombings killed 100 Iraqis, most of them volunteers looking to join the police or military in Baghdad and a town just to the south.

About 300 Iraqi security forces have been killed since they were re-established in May, according to the military. The U.S. military has been organizing the reconstruction of the Iraqi security forces. The police force has neared its planned goal of 71,000 members. The Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, in charge of internal security, has about 21,000 members and is planned to reach 92,000. The army is recruiting a force of 40,000 soldiers.

In Saturday's attack, about 25 gunmen, some masked and shouting the Islamic slogan "There is no god but Allah," stormed the police station, witnesses said. At the same time, two dozen more attackers pinned down forces at a nearby compound of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps with a barrage of RPGs and gunfire to keep them from coming to the aid of police, according to the witnesses.

At the police station, attackers broke into the jail, gunned down the guards and shot open the cell doors while others threw grenades in other rooms, said police Lt. Col. Jalal Sabri. Eighty-seven prisoners escaped.

ICDC officer, Daeed Hamed said the assault could have been launched to free two Kuwaitis and a Lebanese captured earlier this week on suspicion of being insurgent fighters. Hamed was unsure if the three foreigners were freed.

No civil defense members were killed — a sign of how better protected their compound was, with concrete walls and sandbag blast barriers, than the police station.

The same compound came under attack only two days earlier by gunmen who opened fire from rooftops with RPGs and automatic weapons as Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, was visiting. Abizaid was unharmed in the attack.

"I suspect (the attackers) were Arabs or Syrians or belonged to al-Qaida. They want to create instability and chaos," Sabri said.

With rumors of Iranian or Iraqi Shiite involvement spreading, some Fallujah men gathered outside the hospital and beat up two men, accusing them of belonging to the Badr Brigade, witnesses said.

In Baghdad, Ibrahim, the deputy interior minister, said recent attacks are aimed at tearing apart Iraqi unity. "I warn the Iraqi people against a civil war," he said, adding: "They have to unite and leave behind the personal and other interests to preserve Iraq."

U.S. soldiers fended off an attack by gunmen Saturday against their base in Muqdadiyah, 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Baghdad. Ten attackers were killed, witnesses said.

Also Saturday, demonstrations broke out in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah and the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, where hundreds of angry Iraqis demanded an end to U.S. military raids and searches of their homes.

Carrying placards that read "Today Demonstrations, Tomorrow Explosions," protesters gathered near a giant American-run prison — built by Saddam — and demanded the release of thousands of Iraqi prisoners.

In Kurdish-majority Sulaimaniyah, thousands of protesters clamored for an independent Kurdish state that includes the three autonomous Kurdish provinces as well as disputed parts of northern Iraq containing a large Arab population.

Amazing. The attackers warned shopkeepers not to open today, set up checkpoints on roads, etc.... and nobody in that town bothered to try to to notify their own policemen that an attack was imminent. That indicates one of two things. Either the townspeople are in cahoots with the attackers, in which case the entire town should be surrounded and martial law declared. Or they are not in cahoots with the attackers but are too timid and apathetic to ever make democracy work.

Yep--either way, it's a bad scenario.

No wonder Iraq kissed the boots of a dictator for all those years.

..."Before the attack, the gunmen set up checkpoints and blocked the road leading to the police station, but residents did not notify police, Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Kadhum Ibrahim said in Baghdad. Nearby storeowners were warned not to open Saturday morning..."

"Yep--either way, it's a bad scenario."

Agreed, not good at all.

You see, we didn't kill enough of them during the war. I'm not sure anyone but me sees it this way, but I'm convinced I am correct. Way too many bad men left alive at the end of the war, and way too little bloodshed.

We went to liberate Iraq, bad idea, we should have gone there to conquer them. Like Japan, like Germany.

Do you think that it was the Badr Brigades? I doubt it, as I don't see how they could operate with impunity so far from their base in the south.

I wonder if the rumour has been started in order to alienate people from the insurgents - ITS THOSE SHIA OUTSIDERS COME TO SHOOT UP OUR TOWN! That would play well in a Sunni area - notice how a brawl started outside the hospital between some Sunni and Shia men. However, these type of civil divisions will only make Iraq more difficult to govern long term. Even Sadaam Hussein used to hose down the differences, and make gestures of reconciling the different communities.

We need to study how the Baathists ran that country, for so long, without having it fall apart. The neo-cons tell us that it was a terrible govt, and what Iraq needs is liberal democracy. Oh, such nonsense.

"The Islamofascists see mercy as a sign of weakness."

They do, dear, they do. We've got lawyers, guns, and money, and yet the PC cr*p is going to do us in if we don't change our tune, or at least learn to carry one in a suitcase, if you know what I mean!

It's more likely that they sympathize with the anti-US resistance but are not willing to directly participate. And that's probably indicative of most of the Iraqi population.

That was one of the two scenarios I stated...that they may sympathize with the attackers.

And I don't think that "most of the Iraqi population" supports Lebanese gunmen attacking and killing Iraqi policemen. If the people of Fallujah do support such attacks, then there is little hope for peace and democracy in Fallujah, regardless of when American troops leave.

I think most of the Iraqi population not only supports Lebanese gunmen, but gunmen from any Islamic country who shoots Iraqi police, who are considered to be collaborating with an occupier. There is nothing our occupation can do to gain legitimacy in Iraqi eyes.

I don't see why. Facts are prooving I'm right. But we seem determined to learn the hard way. Perhaps if we stay in Iraq longer and get tougher with them, maybe massacre a few thousand, then maybe the population will learn to love us. Or as you said, erect barriers around cities and declare martial law. I can think of nothing that would more quickly unite the Iraqis to drive the US out. Get real. Iraq's a lost cause. If Republicans don't figure this out and remove the neocons, we will lose in November.

"You see, we didn't kill enough of them during the war. I'm not sure anyone but me sees it this way, but I'm convinced I am correct. Way too many bad men left alive at the end of the war, and way too little bloodshed."

These guys weren't available to be killed during the war. According to the article, they spoke a "foreign language" -- probably Farsi. I.e., they were Iranians.

Imported thugs, hired by the mad mullahs of Iran or al-Qaeda.

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