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Posted on 11/21/2005 4:42:24 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -
U.S. forces left a cordoned area around a house in the northern city of Mosul on Monday where eight suspected al-Qaida members died in a gunfight over the weekend. The White House said it was "highly unlikely" that terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.
North of the capital, Diyala provincial police said a car bomb targeting U.S. Humvees killed five civilians and wounded 12 bystanders in the town of Kanan. At least 145 Iraqi civilians have died in a series of attacks over the last four days, including two bombings at Shiite mosques and another at a funeral.
In Baghdad, three people, including one police officer, were killed by gunmen, police said Monday.
Over the weekend an American soldier near the capital and a Marine in the western town of Karmah were killed in separate insurgent attacks, the military said.
During the intense gunbattle with suspected al-Qaida members on Saturday, three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves to avoid capture, Iraqi officials said. Eleven Americans were also wounded, the U.S. military said.
Police Brig. Gen. Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al-Qaida operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the house.
However, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said Sunday that reports of al-Zarqawi's death were "highly unlikely and not credible." Eyewitnesses in Mosul said the U.S. military, which had cordoned off the area around the two-story house, left the area early on Monday.
"We have no indication that Zarqawi was killed in this fight and we continue operations to search for him," Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman, said Monday.
Al-Zarqawi has narrowly escaped capture in the past. U.S. forces said they nearly caught him in a February 2005 raid that recovered his computer.
The U.S. military also said Sunday that 24 people - including another Marine and 15 civilians - were killed the day before in an ambush on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol in Haditha, west of Baghdad in the volatile Euphrates River valley.
The three American deaths brought to at least 2,094 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday on ABC television's "This Week" that commanders' assessments will determine the pace of any military drawdown. About 160,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq as the country approaches parliamentary elections Dec. 15.
The Pentagon has said it plans to scale back troop strength to its pre-election baseline of 138,000, depending on conditions. Rumsfeld said the number of Iraqi security forces, currently at 212,000 troops, continues to increase.
Rumsfeld also said talk in the United States of a quick withdrawal from Iraq plays into the hands of the insurgents.
"The enemy hears a big debate in the United States, and they have to wonder maybe all we have to do is wait and we'll win. We can't win militarily. They know that. The battle is here in the United States," he told "Fox News Sunday."
In Cairo, Egypt, Iraq's president said Sunday he was ready for talks with anti-government opposition figures and members of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party, and he called on the Sunni-led insurgency to lay down its arms and join the political process.
But President Jalal Talabani, attending an Arab League-sponsored reconciliation conference, insisted that the Iraqi government would not meet with Baath Party members who are participating in the Sunni-led insurgency.
"I want to listen to all Iraqis. I am committed to listen to them, even those who are criminals and are on trial," Talabani told reporters, but adding that he would only talk with insurgents if they put down their weapons.
In Baghdad, hundreds of Sunnis on Sunday demanded an end to the torture of detainees and called for the international community to pressure Iraqi and U.S. authorities to ensure that such abuse does not occur.
Anger over detainee abuse has increased sharply since U.S. troops found 173 detainees, mainly Sunnis and some malnourished and with torture marks on their bodies, at an Interior Ministry prison in Baghdad's Jadriyah neighborhood.
Iraq's Shiite-led government has promised an investigation and punishment for anyone guilty of torture.
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Associated Press reporters Katherine Shrader in Washington, Sinbad Ahmed in Mosul and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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These people dont care who they blow up. Insanity is part and party to this insurgency.
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Hey Zarqawi, you started this, you brought this on yourself. Now you cant rest, you cant hide, you cant run far enough. The United States of America is at your door and it aint the Welcome Wagon. You are a dead man running and Satan waits on your arrival. Marines and Soldiers will provide the transportation.
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!
Officials Probing Whether Raid in Mosul Killed Zarqawi
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By Ellen Knickmeyer and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 21, 2005; A11
BAGHDAD, Nov. 20 -- An Iraqi police commander said Sunday that U.S. and Iraqi officials were certain that seven men who fought to the death in a house in northern Iraq were members of al Qaeda but were still trying to determine whether one of them was Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian insurgent leader.
U.S. and Iraqi forces remained deployed around the site of the three-hour gunfight Saturday at a house in the city of Mosul, north of Baghdad. Children stayed home from class on Sunday, a school day in the Islamic world, and other residents kept off the streets, presumably fearing that more fighting might result from the heavy military presence in the city.
Joint forces backed by U.S. military helicopters had surrounded the house after receiving a tip that led them to believe that Zarqawi might be inside, the governor of Nineveh province, Duraid Kashmoula, said Saturday.
As Iraqi soldiers and U.S. Special Forces advisers went into the building, grenades rained down from the roof, wounding 11 of them, according to a U.S. Army officer near where the raid occurred. Multiple explosions collapsed the building, and two American Special Forces troops were killed, he said.
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See link for the rest of the report!
Something big was going on there ,,,,
/There is a reasonable chance that we got him!
Habeus Corpus Zarqawi
"Produce the body"
Then we can celebrate. :)
Problem is, some of it's here, some of it's there, and we're going to have to scrape some of that wall over yonder...
Obviously, I hope we got him, but his days are numbered either way.
With eroding support among his Arab brethren, slow but sure progress in raising an Iraqi force to counter his loose band of terrorists, and with the political solidifying of the Iraqi democracy, Zarqawi is becoming more of a patriotic symbol for Ted Kennedy and less an actual threat to the civilized world.
Zarqawi can never take away the victories and achievements of our fighting men and women. Saddam will never return to power, the free elections that took place on Jan 30 and Oct 15 can not be undone, and the Iraqi democracy under its new Constitution will be up and running after the Dec 15 elections.
We win. Zarqawi can go to Hell.
Yep. Given the fact that most of his family disowned him after the Jordanian bombings, one would think they'd be happy to give us a DNA sample to compare with the splatter left in the safe house.
I sure hope we finally got that scumbag......
The Jordanians are after him also.
But are they REALLY?
Rumors of Zarqawi's death - and fighting continues in western Anbar province.
He is now in the ME area!
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