Coalition, Iraqis Launch Massive Search for Missing Soldiers
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
BAGHDAD, June 17, 2006 – Coalition and Iraqi officials have launched a massive search operation for two coalition soldiers missing following an incident in Yusufiyah, Iraq, yesterday.
Multinational Force Iraq spokesman Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said today a third soldier was killed in the fight. The names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
The soldiers were manning a checkpoint at a canal crossing near the Euphrates River. Forces at a nearby traffic-control point heard an explosion and small-arms fire at about 7:55 p.m. yesterday.
A quick-reaction force responded and arrived on the scene within 15 minutes, Caldwell said. They found one soldier killed and the other two missing.
Those missing have been listed as "duty status and whereabouts unknown." This category changes to "missing in action" if they are not found in 10 days.
"Coalition soldiers and Iraqi security forces initiated a search operation within minutes to determine the status of (the missing) soldiers, and we are currently using every means at our disposal on the ground, in the air and in the water to find them," Caldwell said.
Following the incident, commanders notified all traffic-control points to stop civilian traffic and increase security. Coalition officials also dispatched helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles to aid the search.
"Within an hour of the incident, blocking positions were established throughout the area in a concerted effort to focus the search and prevent movement of suspects out of the area," Caldwell said.
In addition, coalition forces launched three raids, one today and two yesterday, on suspected terrorist safe houses in the area. Dive teams are searching the canals and river near the site.
Yusufiyah has been the site of many extremist incidents. In April, coalition forces killed and captured a number of foreign fighters hiding in the area. Battles in May resulted in the deaths of more than 40 Sunni extremists. Yusifiyah is a predominantly Sunni town about 10 miles south of Baghdad.
Coalition and Iraqi forces met with local leaders to enlist their aid in finding the missing soldiers.
"We continue to search using every means available and will not stop looking until we find the missing soldiers," Caldwell said. "Make no mistake: We never stop looking for our servicemembers until their status is definitively determined, and we will continue to pray for their safe return."
Only one soldier is listed as missing in action during the three-plus years of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Terrorists said they captured Army Sgt. Matt Maupin in April 2004. A videotape alleged to show Maupin appeared on an extremist Web site.
http://www.dod.mil/news/Jun2006/20060617_5444.html
2 Missing U.S. Soldiers Are Sought in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 17 — American soldiers on Saturday went house to house, scanned the streets from helicopters and dove into irrigation canals to try to find two of their comrades who had been reported captured by insurgents in an ambush south of the capital.
The two Americans, who were not identified, were taken prisoner at dusk on Friday by a group of masked guerrillas who mounted a surprise attack on their Humvee near Yusufiya, a town that is a stronghold of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Iraqis in the area said.
The American command in Baghdad confirmed that two Americans were missing on Friday after insurgents attacked a checkpoint they had set up on a canal crossing near the Euphrates River. One soldier was killed in the attack, which appeared to be an elaborate lure intended to isolate part of the force.
"We are currently using every means at our disposal on the ground, in the air and in the water to find them," said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the spokesman for the American military.
According to Iraqis in the area, who were interviewed by telephone from Baghdad, the two American soldiers who survived the gun battle were led away by the insurgents to a pair of cars.
Hassan Abdul Hadi was tending to his date palms and apple trees near the village of Karagol when he heard gunfire and explosions. When he walked to the road, he spotted an American Humvee, he said.
"I was shocked to see the Humvee — nothing seemed to be wrong with it," Mr. Hadi said. "Then I heard the men shouting 'God is great!' and I saw that they had taken the Americans with them. The gunmen took them and drove away."
At the time of the attack, the American soldiers were at a traffic control checkpoint on the edge of Karagol. According to the Iraqis, the checkpoint was guarded by about a dozen American soldiers who had arrived in three Humvees.
The checkpoint came under fire from insurgents operating from the fruit groves that line the road. The Americans in two of the Humvees took off in pursuit as the insurgents retreated into the groves, possibly to lure them in, the Iraqis said, leaving one Humvee and only three or four American soldiers at the checkpoint.
The checkpoint then came under attack from another direction by a group of seven or eight guerrillas, wearing kaffiyehs over their faces and black track suits, the Iraqis said. At least one of them carried a heavy machine gun, and two of them carried rocket-propelled grenades.
Minutes after the two Americans were taken away, a team of Americans arrived and began searching door to door in the area, the Iraqis said. By Saturday morning, the search had intensified, with soldiers scouring the area, helicopters surveying the landscape from above and divers going into canals, the American military said in a statement.
"The Americans are going house to house, detaining any men they find," said Yusef Abdul Nasir, who lives in Jurf Al Sakhar, a village next to Karagol. He said he had heard rumors that the soldiers were being held in Jurf Al Sakhar.
Mr. Nasir said the Americans were threatening to hold the men they had detained unless the two soldiers were turned over. There was no way to independently verify Mr. Nasir's report.
The American military in Iraq goes to extraordinary lengths to keep its men out of enemy hands. Soldiers never travel alone, nor do individual vehicles; it is not clear whether leaving the lone Humvee behind defied engagement guidelines.
"Make no mistake: we never stop looking for our service members until their status is definitively determined," General Caldwell said.
The apparent capture of the two Americans raises the specter of their public exploitation at the hands of insurgents. Other Americans, including civilian contractors, have been videotaped while they were mistreated, tortured or killed.
The last American soldier known to have been taken prisoner was Specialist Keith Maupin, who was captured by insurgents during an ambush of his convoy in April 2004 near Falluja, west of Baghdad. The Arabic news network Al Jazeera broadcast a videotape that purported to show Specialist Maupin being shot from behind. But the victim's face was not shown in the tape, and the American military has not confirmed his death.
The area around Yusufiya, where the two soldiers disappeared, has been the scene of heavy fighting between American troops — many of them Special Operations commandos — and insurgents believed to be connected to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. That group's founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in an American airstrike last week, and the American military said that information about his network had been found in safe houses in and around Yusufiya.
In May, a huge gun battle unfolded when American Special Operations commandos stormed a suspected insurgent safe house in Yusufiya. The Americans said they had killed 25 insurgents and had also lost two airmen when insurgents shot down their MH-47E Night Stalker transport, a sophisticated variant of the Chinook helicopter that is used in Special Operations missions.
In interviews conducted earlier this year, Iraqi insurgent leaders told The New York Times that Karagol, the village near where the two Americans appear to have been captured, was under the control of Al Qaeda.
The search for the Americans came on a day of widespread violence across the capital, with most of the attacks apparently carried out by insurgents. There were seven attacks in all: one suicide bombing, a mortar attack, three car bombings and the explosions of a bomb placed under a pushcart and a bomb placed inside a minibus. Thirty-eight Iraqis were killed and 75 wounded, the Interior Ministry said.
The attacks broke a spell of relative calm in the capital after the beginning on Wednesday of a citywide security crackdown by American soldiers and Iraqi security forces in the aftermath of Mr. Zarqawi's death.
The pushcart bomb exploded in the Haraj market, near the Tigris River in central Baghdad. The bomb went off in the middle of a line of pushcarts, which impoverished Iraqis use to hawk mainly secondhand clothing. The explosion, which killed 5 civilians and wounded 25, scattered human bodies, broken carts and burned clothing up and down the street and against the shop windows that line the street.
On many days, the violence here seems to unfold without pattern or reason. It struck the local Iraqis who gathered at the Haraj market as senseless, too.
"Only the poor people work here," said Tariq Abd Zein, 35, who sells secondhand shoes. "I don't understand the meaning of bombing this market."
http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/91874