Posted on 11/13/2004 8:46:42 AM PST by TexKat
Also, any pix of the "green trestle" bridge that they hung those poor contractors from and that is now apparently occupied by marines/soldiers?
Looks like he pooped his pants
Stay safe, boys. Keep it wired tight.
Ok. Stupid question. Is that a Marine or a Soldier? I can at least tell he's got that dope's AK slung on his back.
US Army, the Marines have a different "digital" cammoflage pattern.
A Marine watches for insurgent activity in Falluja, November 10, 2004. U.S. forces expect to be positioned throughout the last remaining guerrilla stronghold in Falluja by Tuesday, a Marine officer said on November 13. Taking the area they have called 'Queens,' the Shuhada district in the south of the city, would give U.S.-led forces near total control of Falluja. (USMC/Reuters)
U.S. Marines and Iraqi Security Force soldiers with Company I, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, prepare to clear a building in Falluja November 10, 2004. An Iraqi Red Crescent convoy entered Falluja on Saturday with the first supplies of aid to reach the city since U.S.-led forces began to blast their way in five days ago. Picture taken November 10, 2004. EDITORIAL USE ONLY REUTERS/Sgt. Luis R. Agostini/USMC
Aid Convoy Reaches Falluja, Gunmen Roam Mosul
By Michael Georgy and Omar Anwar
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - An Iraqi Red Crescent convoy entered Falluja on Saturday with the first supplies of aid to reach the city since U.S.-led forces began to blast their way in five days ago.
Spokeswoman Firdoos al-Abadi said 30 volunteers with five trucks and three ambulances had driven into the city, 32 miles west of Baghdad, after an initial delay at a U.S. checkpoint.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed more than 1,000 insurgents in the battle to retake Falluja, Kasim Daoud, minister of state for national security affairs, told a news conference.
"More than 1,000 Saddamists and terrorists have been killed. Around 200 have been arrested," he said. "The operations are almost over. There are only pockets of resistance left."
The Falluja offensive has inflamed resentment across Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartlands, especially in the northern city of Mosul, where insurgents have seized control of some districts.
President Bush warned that guerrilla violence in Iraq could worsen, despite the Falluja operation, as elections in January approach.
"The desperation of the killers will grow, and the violence could escalate. The success of democracy in Iraq would be a crushing blow to the forces of terror, and the terrorists know it," he said.
The aid convoy reached Falluja's main hospital, on the west bank of the Euphrates, but U.S. forces stopped it crossing the river into the city center, saying bridges were insecure.
No humanitarian supplies had reached Falluja since some 10,000 U.S. and 2,000 Iraqi troops attacked it to oust Iraqi insurgents and suspected foreign Muslim militants on Monday.
NO WORD ON CASUALTIES
It is not clear how many of Falluja's estimated 300,000 people remain in the city and there has been no firm word on civilian casualties. More than half the population is believed to have fled before the ground assault began.
"Conditions in Falluja are catastrophic," Abadi said.
Major Clark Watson told Reuters U.S. Marines expected to overcome rebels in their last main redoubt, the Shuhada area of southern Falluja, within 72 hours.
He said U.S. forces were facing tough resistance from Syrian, Chechen and other foreign fighters in the area, but had killed abut 100 since they pushed in on Saturday.
He said U.S. forces would control nearly all of Falluja if they quelled opposition in the district, seen as a stronghold of foreign fighters loyal to al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The military said 22 U.S. and five Iraqi combatants had been killed and 170 U.S. troops wounded in the battle for Falluja.
Civilians still in the city stay indoors, scared by the noise of battle, an Iraqi journalist who left on Friday said.
"If the fighters fire a mortar, U.S. forces respond with huge force," said the journalist, who asked not to be named.
The city had been without power or water for days. Frozen food had spoiled and people could not charge their cellphones.
"Some people hadn't prepared well. They didn't stock up on tinned food. They didn't think it would be this bad," he said.
GUN LAW IN MOSUL
In Mosul, gunmen were still roaming the streets in some districts after storming and looting nine police stations on Thursday, but Iraqi and U.S. forces were guarding some of the bridges that span the Tigris River in the city, residents said.
In other districts, vigilantes set up roadblocks and patrolled neighborhoods to deter thieves and looters.
The U.S. military said the city was calmer on Saturday, with only sporadic fighting in some areas. It said three of five Tigris bridges had reopened and a curfew had been lifted.
Mosul, a mostly Sunni city of about two million people, tipped into chaos on Wednesday and Thursday, when bands of gunmen ran amok, attacking and torching nine police stations.
The U.S. commander in the north said gunmen in Mosul were trying to draw attention from Falluja, but that they appeared to be locals, not insurgents who had escaped the American cordon around a city long regarded as Iraq's most rebellious.
The U.S.-backed interim government has vowed to crush rebels so that Iraqis can vote in elections in January, but the Falluja assault and a week-old state of emergency have failed to quell unrest in other Sunni cities, many of which are under curfew.
The government said Baghdad airport, initially closed on Monday night for 48 hours, would remain shut indefinitely. (Additional reporting by Luke Baker and Lin Noueihed in Baghdad and Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul)
Most of American will but if they dont here is a quote from Ann Coulter that will help us understand why.
"We've finally given liberals a war against fundamentalism, and they don't want to fight it. They would, except it would put them on the same side as the United States."
BOOM!!!
thats democracy you are tasting fallujah, now when are these dumb iraqis gonna rise against their REAL enemy, the terrorists???
Good guys? Bad guys? ????
Foxnews just reporting that US Military estimates there may be as many as 1000 hardened terrorist fighters are preparing elaborate defenses in the Fallujah industrial district source of the MNF Forces......
Calling Dr BUFF, Dr BUFF, you have an appointment in the industrial district.
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
FALLUJAH, Iraq - Backed by tanks and artillery fire, U.S. troops launched a major attack Saturday against insurgent holdouts in southern Fallujah, hoping to finish off resistance in what had been the major guerrilla bastion of central Iraq. An Iraqi official estimated that about 1,000 insurgents had been killed so far in the weeklong offensive.
In the northern city of Mosul, a car bomb exploded as an Iraqi National Guard convoy passed by, witnesses said. In recent days, an armed uprising in sympathy with Fallujah's insurgents has killed 10 Iraqi National Guards and one American soldier, the U.S. military said.
The region's governor blamed the uprising on "the betrayal of some police members" and said National Guard units arrived to help quell the violence. Also, a U.S. infantry battalion was diverted from Fallujah and sent back to Mosul.
Insurgents appeared to be taking advantage of the lessening of American troop strength around Fallujah as U.S. commanders report an increase in small-scale rebel attacks.
On Saturday night, at least five heavy explosions rocked central Baghdad. Earlier, insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades attacked the Ministry of Education, a witness said. Iraqi police also clashed with militants.
Fallujah appeared engulfed in thick, black smoke as the latest U.S. attack began at midday Saturday amid the crackle of machine guns and the flashes of fire from muzzles of American tanks arrayed around the city's southern rim. A single minaret stood out against the blackened southern skyline.
About 1,000 insurgents had been killed and another 200 captured during the Fallujah operation, Iraq's national security adviser Qassem Dawoud said on national television.
"We are just pushing them against the anvil," said Col. Michael Formica, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division's 2nd Brigade. "It's a broad attack against the entire southern front."
Marines in northern Fallujah were hunting for about a dozen insurgents dressed in National Guard uniforms after reports they were wandering the city.
"Any (Iraqi National Guard) or (Iraqi special forces) not seen with the Marines are to be considered hostile," Lt. Owen Boyce, 24, of Hartford, Conn., told his men.
Overnight, two city mosques were hit by airstrikes after troops reported sniper fire from inside. On Saturday, two Marines were killed by a homemade bomb southeast of Fallujah, raising the American death toll in the operation to at least 24.
As the U.S. Army and Marines attacked inside Fallujah from the north, the Marines' 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion blocked insurgents from fleeing. U.S. officials estimate there are about 1,000-2,000 insurgents in the towns and villages around Fallujah who were not trapped inside the city during the U.S.-Iraqi siege, which began Monday.
A U.S. warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb to destroy an insurgent tunnel network in the city, CNN embedded correspondent Jane Arraf reported.
U.S. officials said they hoped the latest surge would be the final assault on Fallujah, followed by a house-to-house clearing operation to search for boobytraps, weapons and guerrillas hiding in the rubble. U.S. and Iraqi officials want to restore control of Fallujah and other Sunni militant strongholds before national elections due by Jan. 31.
The fierce fighting has taken its toll on the Americans. More than 400 wounded soldiers have been taken to the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, a hospital spokeswoman said.
A four-vehicle convoy of the Iraqi Red Crescent carrying humanitarian assistance arrived in Fallujah after the Iraqi and American troops allowed them to pass.
West of Baghdad on a highway stretching toward Fallujah, U.S. airstrikes and clashes between troops and rebels left four people dead and 29 others wounded, police and hospital officials said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces launched their mass ground assault against Fallujah late Monday after the city's hardline clerical leadership refused to hand over extremists, including Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has a $25 million American bounty on his head.
U.S. officials confirmed the arrest of about 14 suspected foreign fighters, but Dawoud said Saturday that al-Zarqawi and Fallujah leader Abdullah al-Janabi "have escaped."
Dawoud also estimated that 90 percent of Fallujah's residents evacuated before the assault.
With resistance in Fallujah waning, U.S. and Iraqi forces began moving against insurgent sympathizers among Iraq's hardline Sunni religious leadership, arresting at least four clerics and raiding offices of groups opposing the assault.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said four American helicopters had been hit by insurgent ground fire in separate attacks near Fallujah. Their uninjured crews returned to base safely.
Before Saturday's offensive, U.S. forces reported that mortar fire from inside Fallujah had nearly ceased but insurgent mortar attacks against U.S. positions and bases outside the city had stepped up.
Violence flared elsewhere in the volatile Sunni Muslim areas, from Hawija and Tal Afar in the north to Samarra and Ramadi in central Iraq.
The most serious uprising occurred in Mosul, a city of about 1 million people 220 miles north of Baghdad, where insurgents targeted bridges, police stations and government buildings starting Thursday.
The 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, a unit of the 25th Infantry Division, was ordered out of Fallujah and back to Mosul late Thursday.
On Saturday, a car bomb injured seven National Guardsmen, including two critically, as their convoy passed by in the eastern Nour district, said Radwan Hannoun of the Jumhuri Hospital.
Iraqi authorities requested reinforcements after police abandoned their posts. On Saturday, National Guardsmen, many of them ethnic Kurds, were seen patrolling parts of the city.
In a radio statement, Mosul Gov. Duriad Kashmoula blamed the uprising on "the betrayal of some police members." Kashmoula said more National Guard units had arrived to help restore order, and 40 insurgents had been killed in fighting.
Some witnesses reported seeing armed men wearing traditional Kurdish attire standing guard in at least three areas of the city. The Kurds are the most pro-American of Iraq's various ethnic and cultural groups.
In Fallujah, Saif al-Deen al-Baghdadi, an official of the insurgents' political office, urged militants to fight U.S. forces outside Fallujah.
"I call upon the scores or hundreds of the brothers from the mujahedeen ... to press the American forces outside" Fallujah, al-Baghdadi said in a telephone interview late Friday with Al-Jazeera television.
"Ayad Allawi's government ... represents the fundamentalist right-wing of the White House and not the Iraqi people," he said — a reference to Iraq's prime minister, who gave to the go-ahead for the Fallujah invasion.
___
Associated Press reporters Edward Harris in Fallujah and Tini Tran, Sameer N. Yacoub, Mariam Fam, Sabah Jerges, Katarina Kratovac and Maggie Michael in Baghdad contributed to this report.
Probably not hardened enough. They are going to wish they weren't there.
They are surrounded, and the perimeter is being collapsed...IT just makes it easier to kill 'em all..
And our forces aren't done over there yet, either.
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