Posted on 05/11/2005 3:28:06 PM PDT by Choose Ye This Day
JARAMI, Iraq, May 10 -- Screaming "Allahu Akbar'' to the end, the foreign fighters lay on their backs in a narrow crawl space under a house and blasted their machine guns up through the concrete floor with bullets designed to penetrate tanks. They fired at U.S. Marines, driving back wave after wave as the Americans tried to retrieve a fallen comrade.
Through Sunday night and into Monday morning, the foreign fighters battled on, their screaming voices gradually fading to just one. In the end, it took five Marine assaults, grenades, a tank firing bunker-busting artillery rounds, 500-pound bombs unleashed by an F/A-18 attack plane and a point-blank attack by a rocket launcher to quell them.
The Marines got their fallen man, suffering one more dead and at least five wounded in the process. And according to survivors of the battle, the foreign fighters near the Syrian border proved to be everything their reputation had suggested: fierce, determined and lethal to the last.
"They came here to die," said Gunnery Sgt. Chuck Hurley, commander of the team from the 1st Platoon, Lima Company, of the Marines' 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, that battled the insurgents in the one-story house in Ubaydi, about 15 miles east of the Syrian border.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Please read the whole account.
That was what awaited the Marines on the last block they cleared, at the last house. The first Marine there found the gate in the high walls around the house open; the front door was locked.
"As soon as he kicks the door, the machine-gun fire cuts him down," said Hurley, a Dayton, Ohio, police officer serving in the Marine Reserves. The Marine survived, but a second fell as well, fatally wounded. From inside, a foreign fighter fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the door.
At some point, the screamed prayers began: "Allahu Akbar" -- "God is great."
Marines fell, unable to tell the source of the screams or the shots. They fired blindly, as machine-gun rounds cratered the walls and floors around them.
"Our rounds couldn't get through the walls," Hurley said.
God Bless our fighting men and women. Showing bravery and courage each and every day.
Good for them. Of course, the bleeding heart pantywaists will be screaming "human rights abuse" faster than you can say "Abu Ghraib" because of this.
Well, if ever there was anything worth napalming, then here it was. At least they could "spill" couple gallons of gasoline inside and then toss a cigarette butt. It is easy to double-guess from a distance, but this mode of proceeding would save at least one Marine.
"U.S. officers say the most-wanted insurgent leader in Iraq, the Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, is being sheltered among tribal leaders in Haditha and Hit, two towns 80 and 110 miles downriver. The Americans say Zarqawi was almost caught in February at a checkpoint between the towns. Other sightings since have placed him in other towns on the south side of the Euphrates. In Haqlaniyah, Zarqawi felt bold enough to preach a sermon at a mosque, according to at least one report to U.S. forces."
If someone could have just paid close attention to angle of fire and then poured/sprayed gasoline into the building -- problem solved. Don't let it happen again.
Thanks for posting this! Great article. A family friend, a Marine, was stationed in Hit last year...told us it's pronounced "heat". That begs the headline: "Zarqawi in Hit?"
What an amazing account; thanks for the post.
Ridiculous!
BTW this thread is a duplicate.
"Our rounds couldn't get through the walls," Hurley said.
They didn't have an M2 handy?
Perhaps that new 20mm. will have a place.
I'm pretty sure the US military can meet their expectations...
Wow, must be a new type of bullet and gun. Even a .50bmg with ap tip can't penetrate a tank.
Unless of course they meant A WATER TANK.
By Monday, more than 1,000 Marines backed by Cobra helicopters and Hornet warplanes were pouring into an area north of the Euphrates River where few American troops and no Iraqi forces have been for at least a year.
This bothers me. It appears they may be the source of the car bombs and suicide bombers hitting the country recently. Why has it taken a year to get at these multiplying cockroaches? And how is the border to be secured once we finish this job? Are we going to have to go back again in 6-months or a year to repeat the process? And where are these terrorists getting the special ammo that is so powerful it will shoot through concrete floors and walls to injure and kill our men?
Answers anyone?
At the end of the day the bad guy body count is all that matters...not how ya got the count.
FWIW, a lit cigarette butt will NOT ignite gasoline.
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