Posted on 05/12/2005 2:49:20 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -
0512iraq From their rooftops, Syrians in frontier towns watched airstrikes and battles on the other side of the Iraqi border, where U.S. forces are fighting insurgents in an offensive raging uncomfortably close to Syria's doorstep.
Rawaf Hamad, a farmer in the village of Showaiyeh, said he was shaken awake at 3 a.m. Thursday by shelling about a mile away in the Iraqi town of al-Qaim. He heard the sound of warplanes
"There was heavy gunfire that lasted until 6 a.m. today," the 24-year-old said.
Besides unnerving border residents, the fighting is politically unsettling for the Syrian government - in light of persistent U.S. pressure on it to do more to stop fighters crossing its borders into Iraq.
The Syrian government has not made any comment about the combat, and its security forces have been keeping non-residents away from the border area, requiring journalists to get permits to go there.
Hundreds of American troops have been rolling through desert outposts along the Euphrates River in northwest Iraq, trying to root out what they say is a refuge for insurgents from other parts of Iraq and a staging ground for fighters coming in from Syria.
The fighting, now in its fifth day, is one of the biggest U.S. military operations in Iraq since Fallujah was taken from militants six months ago. As many as 100 insurgents were killed in the first 48 hours of the offensive, and at least five Marines have been killed.
In Abu Kamal , a town of 70,000 about three miles from the border, residents could feel the ground shake from the fighting across the border. People took to rooftops to watch U.S. fighter jets and helicopter gunships bombard insurgents hiding in houses in al-Qaim. The Syrians said they could hear small arms fire from the ground, apparently insurgents returning fire.
Heavy fighting broke out in the area at about midday Wednesday and continued through daybreak Thursday before it tapered off to sporadic exchanges in the afternoon.
"Smoke was rising in the air from al-Qaim," said one Abu Kamal resident, speaking on condition of anonymity because of worries about problems with the Syrian security agency.
Residents of the town were "not scared because nothing is happening on this side and it's a bit far for shrapnel to hurt people," he said by telephone. Power remained on in Abu Kamal and businesses were open during the day.
The Syrian border post area of Al-Hiri was empty of travelers. The border point had been closed for months.
The border has been a point of friction at times in the past, with Bush administration officials accusing Syria of letting Islamic militants bent on fighting U.S.-led coalition forces enter Iraq.
Last month, Iraq accused Syrian border guards of opening fire on their Iraqi counterparts as a group of militants tried to slip through, an accusation Damascus denied. American forces have complained of coming under mortar fire from the Syrian side of the border - though they say they don't know by whom.
Since the war in Iraq began in 2003, several cross-border shootings have wounded Syrians and damaged property.
Syria has repeatedly denied it was allowing fighters to slip across its 380-mile border into Iraq and stressed it was doing all it can to stop it.
In November, Syrian bulldozers built a 12-foot-high sand barrier along Syria's remote border with Iraq in the Abu Kamal region. Authorities said they've begun round-the-clock patrols and set up new observation posts to stop foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq.
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Today: May 12, 2005 at 15:38:18 PDT
JAZIRAH DESERT, Iraq (AP) -
On the first day of a major U.S. offensive, two shells landed in Um Mazin's house. Grabbing what she could, she fled with four other women and 21 children.
They are now all sheltering in a single flimsy tent, braving sandstorms in the desert - one of scores of families who have fled the roar of fighter jets, shattering gunfire and artillery barrages near the Syrian border.
"We ran away from the American bombings," said Um Mazin, as the wind picked up, sending sand swirling around her. "The Americans do not hit the gunmen, they hit the houses of civilians."
More than 1,000 U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers are sweeping through small desert outposts, searching for followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most-wanted militant leader. The thundering offensive, which began late Saturday in the border town of Qaim, about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, sent hundreds of people fleeing from surrounding villages.
Dozens of tents now dot a desolate highway running south through the desert to Jordan.
Um Mazin said no one was hurt when the shells landed in her house in the village of Karabilah. But her husband and his two brothers bundled their mother, wives and children into several cars and sent them south for safety. The husbands stayed behind.
The families left in such a hurry, she said, they did not bring all the supplies they need to survive in the bleak environment.
"We did not take enough food, water, medicine or clothes ... and we are tired of the sandstorms," Um Mazin said wearily. "No one can go back now, and we do not know what happened to our husbands."
With no aid agencies to help them, all they can do is wait for the fighting to stop. Trucks with water did reach some of the refugees.
About 60 people from seven closely related families were camped nearby, some sitting in the shade of their vehicles as temperatures climbed. Like Um Mazin, they were too afraid to give their full names.
Abu Riad, who appeared middle-aged, was fretting over his sickly month-old daughter.
"I do not know what she is suffering from," he said. "Maybe it's all the sand she is breathing, or that we are living off bread and salty water from a nearby well."
The family of 55-year-old Abu Moayad didn't even have a tent to shield them from the dust storms. "We are in a miserable situation," he said.
When the bombardments started, Abu Moayad's family tried to reach Qaim, but was blocked by Iraqis who had gathered there to fight the Americans.
"The city is filled with armed men," he said. He insisted, however, they were ordinary men trying to defend their town, not members of al-Zarqawi's terror network.
"The Americans always try to find excuses to attack our people," he grumbled.
Others disputed his account, saying foreign fighters had been slipping across the Syrian border into Iraq.
One elderly man interviewed by Associated Press Television News in Qaim blamed the foreigners for drawing the American assault.
"We are peaceful people who were in our homes," said the man, who feared being identified by name. "They came to us from all countries, and now the Americans have come."
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Today: May 12, 2005 at 13:59:27 PDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -
More than two years after Saddam Hussein's fall, 85 percent of Iraqis complain of frequent power outages, only 54 percent have access to clean water and almost a quarter of Iraqi children suffer from chronic malnutrition, a U.N.-Iraqi survey revealed Thursday.
"The survey, in a nutshell, depicts a rather tragic situation of the quality of life," said Iraq's new planning minister, Barham Saleh.
Although Saleh blamed years of wars, economic mismanagement and repressive policies under Saddam, conditions worsened after the U.S. invasion in 2003, and insurgents now are doing their best to tear down the economy, averaging 70 attacks a day at the start of May.
The U.S. reconstruction effort also has drawn criticism. Last week, government investigators said U.S. civilian authorities in Iraq cannot properly account for nearly US$100 million promised for projects in south-central Iraq.
But for all the challenges, the U.N. secretary-general's deputy special representative in Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, said the situation could be much worse.
"In spite of the bad news that we hear, a lot of what is being offered by the international community and done by the Iraqi authorities is anyway reaching a lot of people," he said. "Not enough but moving - otherwise this report would have been much more serious and much worse."
The survey, conducted last year by the U.N. Development Program and the Planning Ministry, paints a picture of persistent misery for many Iraqis.
Mohammed Najm, the owner of a Baghdad perfume shop, said Thursday the new Iraqi government should make improving infrastructure as high a priority as it does fighting the insurgency. Since Saddam's ouster, "we haven't seen even 10 percent worth of improvement," he said.
Kadhim Hatem, who owns a clothing store in Baghdad, said improving living standards would help defuse the insurgency. "If unemployment is brought down, terrorist attacks will decrease," he said. "When those people have jobs, they cannot be recruited."
A total of 21,688 households in Iraq's 18 provinces were surveyed for the report.
It found 1.5 million new housing units are needed to deal with a critical housing shortage. Almost a quarter of Iraqi children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years suffer from chronic malnutrition, and 193 women out of every 100,000 births die in labor.
Unemployment is running at just over 18 percent, literacy at 65 percent.
Before U.S. forces invaded in March 2003, Baghdad residents could expect about 20 hours of electricity a day. Today, they're lucky to get 10, usually broken into two-hour runs or less. There are also frequent fuel and drinking water shortages. And only 37 percent of the population has a working sewage system, the report said.
"If we compare this to what was there in the 1980s, we would see a major deterioration in the situation," Saleh said. "In 1980, 75 percent of families had access to clean water."
Iraq had one of the region's best infrastructures, health and education systems in the 1970s, but conditions deteriorated rapidly after Saddam became president in 1979.
In 1980, Saddam started an eight-year war against Iran. His August 1990 invasion of Kuwait launched another ruinous war and brought U.N. sanctions that remained in place until U.S. forces toppled his regime in April 2003.
"The former regime's repressive policies, its wars ... and its mismanagement of the economy are an important part of why we are here today," Saleh told reporters.
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On the Net:
http://www.iq.undp.org/ilcs.htm
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Today: May 12, 2005 at 16:34:58 PDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -
0512iraq Militants assassinated a general and a colonel who were en route to work Thursday, and a car bomb exploded near a busy market and movie theater in eastern Baghdad, part of a wave of attacks that killed at least 24 people, including three U.S. soldiers, and wounded more than 70, authorities said.
The violence comes despite a major U.S. offensive aimed at followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, in a remote desert region near the Syrian border said to be a staging ground for some of the deadliest attacks.
Two U.S. Marines were killed and 14 wounded when an explosive device hit their troop transport vehicle during the offensive Wednesday. At least five Marines and as many as 100 insurgents have been killed in all in Operation Matador, which entered its fifth day Thursday.
Elsewhere, three American soldiers were killed and one was injured in separate roadside bombings.
Insurgent violence killed more than 400 people in two weeks, including at least 69 people on Wednesday, underscoring the intensity of the fight for Iraq's future in the three months since the country's first democratic elections - and more than two years since the United States declared the end of major combat.
Insurgents detonated four car bombs in Baghdad, including at least two suicide attacks, on Thursday, said Master Sgt. Greg Kaufman, a U.S. military spokesman
In the bloodiest, a parked car blew up in eastern Baghdad and set fire to shops and cars and damaged a nearby apartment, said police 1st Lt. Mazin Saeed. The bomb killed at least 17 people and wounded 65, with women and children among the injured, said police Lt. Col. Ahmed Aboud.
An enraged crowd turned its anger on police and journalists, beating at least two Iraqi photographers. Police and U.S. troops fired in the air to disperse the crowd, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene.
A bomb exploded near a vehicle east of Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad, killing a U.S. soldier assigned to the 155th Brigade Combat Team, II Marine Expeditionary Force, the military said.
A soldier with Task Force Liberty was killed Thursday and another injured by a roadside bomb that exploded near their patrol in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.
In the capital, a Task Force Baghdad soldier also died when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle, the military said.
At least 1,611 members of the U.S. military have died since the war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
A suicide car bomber targeted an American convoy on a highway in western Baghdad, injuring two civilians, said police 1st Lt. Majid Zaki. No American casualties were reported.
Elsewhere in the capital, suspected insurgents shot and killed Brig. Gen. Iyad Imad Mahdi as he drove to work at the Ministry of Defense, and Col. Fadhil Mohammed Mobarak was shot and killed as he traveled to the Interior Ministry, where he led its police control room, police said.
Two more car bombs exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, police said. One blast went off near a police station in a central residential area, killing two people and wounding two, said police Capt. Sarhad Talabani.
The other exploded at a site where explosives experts were dismantling a roadside bomb that residents had found, said police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qader. Two of the experts were wounded by the blast, which also destroyed nearby vehicles, Qader said.
During the fifth day of Operation Matador, hundreds of American troops in tanks and light armored vehicles continued to roll through desert outposts to root out militants. Residents in the villages of Karabilah and Saadah reported heavy bombardments by U.S. artillery or warplanes Thursday following what they believed was fighting in the area.
On Wednesday night, a U.S. Assault Amphibian Vehicle struck an explosive device outside the town of Husaybah, killing two Marines and wounding 14, American military spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool said Thursday.
Earlier in the offensive, which began late Saturday night, at least three Marines were reported killed and 20 wounded. It is one of the biggest U.S. military operations in Iraq since Fallujah was taken from militants six months ago.
The U.S. military has confirmed five Marines killed in all. However, The Washington Post, which has a journalist embedded with the offensive, put the figure at seven in a Thursday report.
Six of the dead came from a single squad, which also had 15 wounded, according to the Post.
The journalist, reporting from the town of Haban near the Syrian border, identified the squad as one of three that make up the 1st Platoon of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment.
"They used to call it Lucky Lima," the Post quoted U.S. Maj. Steve Lawson, the commander of the company, as saying of the badly hit squad. "That turned around and bit us."
As many as 100 insurgents were killed in the first 48 hours of the offensive when U.S. forces clashed with well-organized and well-equipped fighters in Obeidi, 200 miles west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
Operation Matador was launched after U.S. intelligence showed insurgents had moved into the northern Jazirah Desert after losses in the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
Pool said Wednesday that the region is used as staging area for foreign fighters who cross into Iraq from Syria along ancient smuggling routes known as "rat lines."
"It is here that these foreign fighters receive the weapons and equipment to conduct attacks, such as suicide car bombs and assassination or kidnapping of political or civilian targets," Pool said in a statement.
The presence of foreign fighters has been confirmed by detainees captured during the operation, he said.
In another report from an embedded journalist, the Los Angeles Times reported that some U.S. commanders believe the area contains insurgent training camps and high-ranking members of the Iraq arm of the al-Qaida terrorist network, including al-Zarqawi, but that as of early Tuesday, no camps or al-Qaida in Iraq leaders had been found.
In northern Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers killed four insurgents, wounded two others and detained 97 suspects in raids in Mosul and near Qayyarah, the U.S. military said.
There has been no word on the fate of Douglas Wood, an Australian engineer who was taken hostage. Australia's top Islamic leader, Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly, has traveled to Baghdad to try to win the release of the 63-year-old resident of Alamo, Calif.
Al-Hilaly suggested Thursday that Wood's captors may have extended their Monday deadline for Australia to withdraw its troops from Iraq. He told Associated Press Television News that he was ready to negotiate with any party.
On Wednesday, a security firm said a witness reported that a Japanese worker taken hostage may have suffered fatal wounds. The international security company Hart said in a statement on its Web site that it has not given up hope that Akihito Saito, 44, may be alive.
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Today: May 12, 2005 at 16:34:59 PDT
As of Thursday, May 12, 2005, at least 1,613 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,233 died as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department. The figures include four military civilians.
The AP count is two higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated at 11 a.m. EDT Thursday.
The British military has reported 87 deaths; Italy, 21; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 17; Spain, 11; Bulgaria, eight; Slovakia, three; Estonia, Thailand and the Netherlands, two each; and Denmark, El Salvador, Hungary, Kazakhstan and Latvia one death each.
Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 1,475 U.S. military members have died, according to AP's count. That includes at least 1,124 deaths resulting from hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
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The latest deaths reported by the military:
- Two Marines were killed Wednesday when an explosive detonated near their vehicle in Qa'im, Iraq.
- Three soldiers were killed in separate incidents Thursday when explosives detonated near their vehicles in Baghdad, Musayib and Samarra, Iraq.
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The latest identification reported by the military:
- Army 1st Sgt. Michael J. Bordelon, 37, Morgan City, La.; died Tuesday at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, from injuries suffered April 23 when an explosive detonated near his vehicle in Mosul, Iraq; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Wash.
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On the Net:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/
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Today: May 12, 2005 at 16:34:59 PDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -
0512iraq A car bomb exploded in a jammed commercial district Thursday, devastating the area and turning the sky gray as shops and restaurants caught fire in the most deadly of a string of attacks that killed 21 and included the assassinations of a general and a colonel on their way to work.
Iraqis expressed growing fury at the relentless bloodshed, throwing stones at police and U.S. forces who came to the scene of the bombing. More than 90 were also wounded in Thursday's violence.
The attacks came as U.S. troops were in the midst of a major offensive near the Syrian border, 200 miles northwest of Baghdad. Fierce clashes were reported with insurgents on the outskirts of the town of Qaim, where angry residents lashed out at U.S. forces.
"They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We have nothing left," one man in Qaim told Associated Press Television News. He did not give his name and hid his face with a scarf to address the camera.
Families were fleeing in trucks packed with luggage and APTN footage showed plumes of smoke rising from the town. The U.S. has pounded the area with air strikes, artillery barrages and gunfire in the first days of the offensive aimed at rooting out followers of Iraq's most wanted militant leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Five more American troops died in Iraq, two during the offensive Wednesday and three others when their convoys hit roadside bombs Thursday in Baghdad and surrounding areas, the U.S. military announced. At least 1,611 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
More than 420 people have died in the two weeks since Iraq's first democratically elected government was announced.
At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated Thursday that the insurgency could last for many more years.
"This requires patience," he said at a news conference. "This is a thinking and adapting adversary ... I wouldn't look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from three, four years to nine years."
"What we're seeing is really an attempt to discredit this new cabinet and new government," Myers said. "This is, the most cases, Iraqis blowing up other Iraqis. And I don't how they expect to curry favor with the Iraq population when we have Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence."
Scores of Iraqis in Baghdad vented their frustration at the nonstop violence, beating two Iraqi photographers and throwing rocks at Iraqi police and U.S. forces at the site of the bloody car bombing near a market, cinema and mosque.
The U.S. and Iraqi troops fired in the air to disperse the crowd, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene.
The blast, which set fire to shops, restaurants and cars, killed 17 Iraqis and injured 81, including women and children, police said. About 15 minutes later, the fuel tank of a burning car also exploded, wounding three more people, police said.
In all, four car bombs hit Baghdad on Thursday, two of them suicide attacks, said Master Sgt. Greg Kaufman, a U.S. military spokesman. At least two of the attacks targeted U.S. patrols, he said, but he had no immediate word on casualties. Police said a suicide car bomber targeting an American convoy on a highway injured two civilian bystanders.
Elsewhere in the capital, insurgents assassinated Col. Fadhil Mohammed Mobarak on his way to work at the Interior Ministry, and Brig. Gen. Iyad Imad Mahdi, who worked at the Defense Ministry, police said. Al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida group in Iraq claimed responsibility for Mobarak's death in an Internet posting. The claim could not be verified.
Two more car bombs exploded in Kirkuk, about 180 miles north of Baghdad, police said. One blast occurred near a police station, killing two people and wounding two, authorities said. The other occurred at a site where explosives experts were dismantling a homemade bomb and two explosive experts were wounded, police said.
The Sunni militant Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for both Kirkuk attacks on its Web site, claims which also could not be verified.
Near the Syrian border, hundreds of American troops searched sparsely populated desert outposts house by house for insurgents as Operation Matador entered its fifth day.
Residents reached by telephone in the villages of Karabilah and Saadah reported hearing heavy bombardments in the morning.
On the outskirts of Qaim, a group of masked gunmen armed with machine guns, remained defiant.
"We will fight whoever comes, whether they are American or Arab," one of them told APTN.
The offensive was launched after U.S. intelligence showed large numbers of insurgents had moved into the northern Jazirah Desert following losses in Fallujah and Ramadi, further east. The area is believed to be a staging ground for foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria along ancient smuggling routes.
The U.S. military has confirmed five Marine deaths so far and says about 100 insurgents have been killed in the operation - one of the largest U.S. offensive since Fallujah was reclaimed from militants.
However, The Washington Post, which has a journalist embedded with the offensive, put the number of Americans killed at seven in a Thursday report. Six of the dead came from a single squad, which also had 15 wounded, according to the Post.
In one battle early in the offensive, foreign fighters holed up in a house in Obeidi killed two Marines and wounded five, the report said. In another attack, an explosive device detonated under their vehicle, killing four Marines and wounding 10, it said.
The article identified the squad as one of three belonging to the 1st Platoon of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment.
"They used to call it Lucky Lima," the Post quoted Maj. Steve Lawson, the commander of the company, as saying of the badly hit squad. "That turned around and bit us."
U.S. military spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool said a U.S. Assault Amphibian Vehicle struck an explosive device in Qaim on Wednesday night, killing two Marines and wounding 14. It was not clear whether he was referring to the same incident mentioned in the Post article.
Stepped up raids also continued in other parts of Iraq. Iraq's government announced the capture of two more wanted insurgents - one a bomb maker with links to al-Zarqawi called Seif-Eddine Mustafa al-Naimi, the other a financier for an insurgent group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq identified as Amar Farid Abdul-Qader Ashur al-Jibouri.
Meanwhile, Australia's top Islamic leader met with clerics in Baghdad on Thursday to appeal for the release of Australian hostage, Douglas Wood. Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly told reporters he had made no contact yet with Woods' captors, but said he was ready to negotiate with anyone.
There has been no word of Wood's fate since his kidnappers' deadline for Australia to start withdrawing its forces from Iraq passed Monday.
More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed in April 2003. More than 30 have been killed by their captors.
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My geography of the ME might be off but, isn't that Syria?
I'm willing to bet that I'm the only Freeper to ever go to Al Qaim. The Army and the Marines always griped about the flow of traffic from Syria. It's a really remote place and extremely difficult to track the people passing through.
on the other side of the Iraqi border,
My geography of the ME might be off but, isn't that Syria?
I should have added, I was smiling when I was typing that.
God bless and protect our soldiers.
Thanks for the note .....seems to me we need to slow the traffic down....
see post 30
Thanks for the good map!
Thanks for the map. Damn, at al Qa'im, we're right on top of them(syria).
I think Abu Kamal on the Syrian side is a sizable city of 70,000!
Yeah! It was 'pan-fried' into his memory... Or maybe it was 'baked'?
Next stop, the Bekka Valley.
"Syria has repeatedly denied it was allowing ... to slip across its 380-mile border into Iraq and stressed it was doing all it can to stop it "
Sounds almost like MEXICO....
You make an excellent point-- Bush scares them. Not because they think of him of Tex, but rather because of the two historic victories under his belt.
As for the diplomatic option, I don't think we would ever flush out enough WMDs and terrrorists from Syria through diplomacy. By crossing the border, we would make it clear just how willing we are to dismantle their regime. Then, maybe diplomacy would stand a better chance, although I doubt it.
"Lets quit messing around and git'r done. No escalation, no diplomatic nicey-nice with the chinless doctor or the UN. Iraqi regulars and USMC go straight to Damascus."
I would prefer careful planning for Damascus, along with a nice bombing operation, but if we cross the border on a hit-and-run raid, then we let the Syrians know we mean business, so they better keep out of the way. If that doesn't work, then we crush them. Lebanon has certainly had enough of Syria, and I wonder what the Lebanon protests are doing to wake up the Syrian people.
FRegards....
Every time I look at the map of Syria, I think of Cambodia.
During the Vietnam War we did not bomb or cut off the supply lines of our enemies. It was a mistake.
If I were the Syrians I would not count on President Bush to repeat the mistakes of President Johnson.
The Syrian people better wake up to the fact their leaders have placed them in the center of a bulls eye and the clock is ticking.
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