http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6382956
U.S. Launches Offensive in Samarra, CNN Reports
Thu Sep 30, 2004 06:26 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. forces accompanied by the Iraqi national guard launched a major offensive against insurgents in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra Thursday, CNN reported.
CNN's reporter in Iraq, Jane Arraf, in a live broadcast from the city, said she was accompanying U.S. forces engaged in the attack, which she described as "an entire brigade-size operation into Samarra to root out insurgents."
She said she had been told there were an estimated 2,000 fighters in the rebel stronghold, including 250 foreigners.
Arraf said the city had previously had been off limits to U.S. forces under an agreement that they would not patrol there.
But Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, have been rocked by growing violence, including three car bombings Thursday that killed 41 people, most of them children.
The U.S. military has said that with the help of Iraqi forces it will retake rebel strongholds such as Samarra, Falluja, Ramadi and the Baghdad neighborhoods of Sadr City and Haifa Street by the end of the year so that elections can go ahead in January.
In a telephone call punctuated several times by explosions, Arraf said the troops were nearing the middle of the city in an assault spearheaded by the 3rd Brigade of the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division.
The force was moving through the city sector by sector to clear out insurgents, she said, reporting on explosions by rocket propelled grenades and bursts of machine gun fire.
This is OJT for the Iraqis. It'll harden them for Fallujah.