Posted on 12/05/2004 10:18:42 AM PST by bushisdamanin04
Two Stryker soldiers killed
Insurgents ambush troops from mosque
MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune
Last updated: December 5th, 2004 03:04 AM (PST)
Two Fort Lewis soldiers were killed Saturday in Mosul, Iraq, when insurgents attacked another Stryker patrol, once again firing from a mosque, a U.S. commander said.
Stryker troops responding to the ambush routed and killed an undetermined number of the gunmen, said Col. Robert Brown, commander of the Fort Lewis-based 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division.
They found weapons and ammunition in the mosque and in a nearby hospital, he said.
Four other Stryker soldiers were wounded and taken to a field hospital, officials in Mosul said late Saturday night. No other information was immediately available.
The attack followed Friday’s running battle in which Stryker troops killed at least 22 fighters who ambushed them along a main highway and from another mosque in western Mosul.
“We were really feeling good about that,” Brown said of Friday’s outcome. “Then today we lose two guys. It’s tough.”
The names of the soldiers were withheld by the Department of Defense, who won’t release them until the soldiers’ families have been notified.
Also Saturday, a suicide bomber attacked a bus of Kurdish peshmerga militiamen who’d just arrived in Mosul from neighboring Irbil province. News media reported seven dead, but Brown estimated the number Saturday evening at 18 dead and 20 wounded.
U.S., Kurdish and Iraqi officials say insurgents are trying to incite ethnic fighting in the country’s north, home to a mix of Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and other groups.
Brown, in an interview with The News Tribune on Saturday, said the fighters his men have battled the past few days are likely foreigners or from other parts of Iraq. They appeared to be better trained than the local insurgents they typically encounter, he said. And residents told U.S. and Iraqi forces that the fighters weren’t from the area.
“We could tell from watching their movements,” Brown said. “The local guys hop out of a car and spray their AK-47s like they don’t know what they’re doing. These guys got out and moved like soldiers.”
He said Iraqi commandos working with the Stryker troops said the insurgents were likely from Syria, Yemen and other neighboring Arab countries.
Friday’s fighting – the heaviest in a month of violence in Mosul – started after the outsiders arrived near the busy Yarmouk traffic circle, Brown said.
“They grabbed an innocent civilian bystander and just shot him in the head, threw him on the ground,” Brown said. “They did it to say to all the people around, ‘If you don’t get out of here, that’s going to happen to all of you.’”
Locals cleared out and the insurgents got to work setting up roadside bombs and ambushes on a mile-long stretch of highway, Brown said.
The Army Times newspaper, which has a reporter embedded with Brown’s brigade, said U.S. patrols came upon the insurgent ambushes before they were fully prepared.
At one location, troops found 20 artillery shells wired together and lying in the street – a so-called “daisy chain” roadside bomb intended for a Stryker vehicle, the paper reported.
“Things were cool,” Sgt. Maj. Frank Wood of the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment told the Army Times. “We made a turn, went into a market area, started getting some hard looks from people. Then we came out into the traffic circle and they started firing their RPGs” – rocket-propelled grenades.
Brown said he moved five infantry companies – some 850 soldiers backed by Apache attack helicopters – out to fight the insurgents.
Brown said there were 22 enemies confirmed dead, and he expected the number to climb to perhaps 40 as officers continued to gather information.
Seven Stryker troops were wounded, he said. Six were treated and returned to duty. The seventh suffered a gunshot wound that broke his arm. He was evacuated for care elsewhere, the brigade commander said.
He said a patrol from the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment came under small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire. The troops shot back, left and returned with companies from the 3-21 and 1-24.
Brown said the troops pursued the insurgents to areas where local residents said they’d fled, including a hospital. He said soldiers found only weapons there.
U.S. military officials believe elements of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s terrorist network have moved north from Fallujah, adding one more piece to the mix of insurgent forces operating in Iraq’s third-largest city. With about 2 million residents, Mosul is a major commercial and cultural hub.
Officials say the fighters include Baathist holdouts from the Saddam Hussein regime, Islamist groups such as Ansar-al-Islam and others.
“You have a little bit of everybody up here. That hasn’t changed,” Brown said. “Probably a little bit more of everybody, after Fallujah.”
The fighting Friday was the heaviest in Mosul since last month’s insurgent attacks on police stations across the city, in which an estimated 75 percent of the city’s 4,000 policemen deserted.
Until Friday, insurgent fighters had avoided taking on U.S. troops. Brown said in every such engagement, Stryker troops inflicted heavy casualties.
The brigade commander said his forces have spent the past two weeks on the offensive in the city, attempting to draw insurgents out to fight.
They’ve set up spot roadblocks and temporary operating bases in the middle of neighborhoods in an effort to counter an intimidation campaign being waged by the insurgency.
In the past three weeks, more than 66 Iraqi security men have been found shot dead in the streets of the city.
The soldiers killed Saturday were the fourth and fifth from the 1st Brigade to be killed since the 5,000-troop Fort Lewis unit deployed to Iraq in October.
A soldier from a Fort Stewart, Ga.-based military police unit working with the 1st Brigade was killed Thursday when his patrol was ambushed in Mosul. Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921 mike.gilbert@thenewstribune.com The Army Times and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
mosques = 1 shot from = 1 big smoking crater
We invite ALL reporters to please enter the mosques first.
Re the fate of enemy Mosques;
I hear ye Mate -
But sometimes I wonder if the weapons caches and intel we harvest from one of these hostile Mosques might be worth the effort in laying seige to and seizing, as opposed to just obliterating them when we take fire from them.
Local "Hearts and minds" nonwithstanding, it seems that our Good Guys found a lot of juicy intel in Falluja (not to mention a few liberated hostages) that would have been destroyed had we done what many of us (myself included from time to time) here on FR stridently suggested, and just MOABED the whole city to oblivion.
My faith in those who are running the show over there is slowly being restored.
A Friend and fellow CW Reenactor is over in Mosul with the ME ANG, and prayers are certainly up for him and all who work and fight for Freedom.
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