FR WAR NEWS!WAR News at Home and Abroad You'll Hear Nowhere Else!
All the News the MSM refuses to use!
Or if they do report it, without the anti-War Agenda Spin!
Posted on 06/03/2007 6:26:50 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The return of Muqtada al Sadr from his four months of self imposed exile in Iran has led to a spike in activity against his political leadership and the extremist elements of his fractured Mahdi Army. Over the past few days, U.S. and Iraqi forces have conducted multiple operations in Sadr City, and over the past 24 hours, killed 4 Mahdi fighters and captured 6 after attacking a rocket team in the northeastern district.
On Saturday and Sunday, U.S. and Iraqi forces conducted air and ground operations against Mahdi Army “rocket” teams targeting the Green Zone (or International Zone). Apache Longbow attack helicopters from the 1st “Attack” Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division killed 4 Mahdi fighters and destroyed 10 rockets and 1 truck. The air attack was followed up by a ground raid by soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team. Six Mahdi fighters were captured in “a residence inside Sadr City.” Reuters reported the engagement occurred in the neighborhood of Habibibya, which U.S. forces cordoned.
The Multinational Forces Iraq press release was clear the Mahdi cell was firing rockets, and not smaller mortars. The word “rocket” was used 7 times in the press release. U.S. forces found 107mm rockets in a field north of Sadr City on Friday. “[The cache] was found in an area known to locals as the ‘Jaish Al Mahdi Forbidden Zone,’ where some rocket attacks on Baghdad’s International Zone have originated,” Multinational Forces Iraq reported. “The cache contained 20 107mm rocket warheads, three fully assembled 107mm rockets, one 60mm mortar and a sandbag full of blasting devices.”
(Excerpt) Read more at billroggio.com ...
Action News
FR WAR NEWS!*************************EXCERPT**********************
The creation of the Iraqi Awakening movements is having an effect in Baghdad and Babil province. The Babil Salvation Council battled two tribes believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda. "Armed clashes have broke out between the Sunni Arab tribes of Janabiyeen and Girtan on one hand, and the Shi'ite Mas'oud tribe," Al-Malaf Press reported. "Sources said that the meeting ended without reaching an agreement between the two tribes, as the Janabiyeen tribe denied that it is harboring Al-Qaeda militants who target Shi'ite civilians, while the Mas'oud tribe asserted that it does." Al Qaeda recently targeted Sheikh Obeid Al-Masoudi, the head of both the Mas'oud tribe and the Babil Salvation Council.
In the western Baghdad neighborhood of Amiriyah, where local residents, insurgent groups, the Anbar Salvation Council and U.S. and Iraqi forces battled al Qaeda, a 10 day curfew has been imposed. The U.S. 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment and the 1st Battalion, 23rd Stryker Battalion was involved in the fighting.
U.S. helicopters and ground forces attacked Mahdi Army rocket teams which were targeting the Green Zone. Four Mahdi fighters were killed and 6 captured, while 10 rockets and a truck were destroyed during the operation.
*************************snip***********************
Iraqi and Coalition forces press the assault on al Qaeda and insurgent networks throughout Iraq. Six al Qaeda were killed and 18 captured during raids in Fallujah, Baghdad and Taji on Thursday and Friday.
On Saturday, Iraqi and U.S. forces struck a major blow against al Qaeda in Fallujah. Seven al Qaeda, including several wearing suicide vests, were killed after a resident tipped off security forces as to their presence. Eight others were detained. Two suicide truck bombs and a bomb factory were dismantled. On Sunday, 7 al Qaeda were captured in raids in Taji and Mosul. One of those captured in Taji "works directly for an al-Qaeda military emir who coordinates all military operations in the Southern Belt and provides foreign fighters to al-Qaeda cells in Baghdad.">****************************************
Bit unusual for Roggio to post on a Sunday.....see just above....
******************************************************
y JANE ARRAF Posted 4 hr. 4 min. ago
They told him they had let two of them go because they couldn’t identify them. “Next time we’ll take you with us,” they said.
U.S. military officials say cooperation from a so-far small group of imams, neighborhood leaders and even former insurgents trying to drive out al-Qaeda is a promising spark. But both U.S. and Iraqi military commanders are wary of fanning it out of control.
“We don’t want to give them too many weapons in case they turn on us,” said a commander of the largely Shiite Iraqi Army in the neighborhood.
The Saddam-era Iraqi Army veteran recognized by the U.S. military as the leader of the group was disappointed with the lack of local participation and eager for more tangible support from American forces.
“At the beginning it was great but after we had some people killed, a lot of people dropped out,” he told me, disheartened.
He said they had started out with about 150 volunteers but now had no more than 30 fighters. As for support from the American forces, “what support are they giving us?” he asked. “You saw with your own eyes – we had six or seven martyrs.”
“We need to be stronger in this neighborhood – the people of the neighborhood. We can’t do it alone. So if we work with the American forces we can start to have security here and then we’ll work on the other neighborhoods,” he said.
U.S. and Iraqi commanders favor standing back and letting the two groups fight.
“We’re still negotiating how we’re going to work together,” said Lieutenant Colonel Dale Kuehl, of the 1st Battalion 5th Cavalry Regiment, in charge of Amiriyah.
“This is not al-Anbar, this is the capital,” said Kuehl referring to an area where Sunni tribes have turned against al-Qaeda with the tacit approval of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.
“We are going to have to find a way to work together on this. I can’t turn Amiriyah over. They will have to find a way to work with the Iraqi Army.”
On Friday, ten U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were injured – one of the soldiers seriously – when a large cache of explosives at a house in Amiriyah blew up after they were led there by an Iraqi informant. They said they did not believe they were ambushed since the informant was with them in the house at the time.
On Saturday another American soldier was killed in the neighborhood after his armored vehicle struck a buried IED.
Sunday the neighborhood appeared calm – for the first time in days there were both men and women in the street.
At the mosque where I watched American medics treat wounded Iraqi fighters when the clashes begin on Thursday, they had ripped up the blood-soaked carpet.
“Did you ever think you’d be standing in a mosque?” I asked one of the soldiers. “And they invited us here,” he said.
Shortly after I arrived with soldiers from the 1st Battalion 5th Cavalry Regiment they received a tip there were 12 bodies at another neighborhood mosque. They decided to go with one of the Iraqi fighters to identify them.
As the Bradlee fighting vehicles approached the mosque, the streets were full of people.
There were no bodies, nor an ambush. The soldiers stopped to talk to people living nearby.
One Iraqi man said the mosque on Wednesday had broadcast calls for residents to fight al-Qaeda. He told Sergeant Stephen Bradshaw he hadn’t seen any of them. “I’ve only seen the fighting on the news,” said the man, who did not want to be identified. “If I saw them of course I’d fight them.”
He said he’d felt safe enough on Sunday to go to his job at a government office in the nearby district of Mansour. Tough choices for strange allies
The U.S. is weighing how much support to give the group.
“What they want to do would not be effective and that’s go out and fight by themselves,” said Captain Kevin Salge, a company commander with the Stryker’s 1st Battalion 23rd Infantry Regiment.
Salge was in the house on Friday which exploded but was not seriously injured. On Sunday he and his men escaped injury when their armored vehicle was hit by an IED.
Compared to al-Qaeda the resistance fighters appear undermanned, undertrained and underequipped.
“Which is why we’ve been telling them stay in this area, secure yourselves, secure your weapons, and come out with us - come out with the Iraqi Army, tell us what’s going on and let us be the muscle behind it to go out there and get them.”
“So far they’ve been working with that – a lot of times they get frustrated they want to jump out but they know that they don’t have the numbers to go out there and fight a huge war.”
For the U.S. military fighting a multi-layered insurgency often sheltered by the local population, this is at least a symbolic victory.
“When you consider the phones calls from the sheikhs, the sheikhs voted – they have chosen a side,” said Major Chris Rogers, of the 1st Battalion 5th Cavalry Regiment, referring to two sheikhs who last week decided to cooperate with U.S. forces.
For the resistance group, U.S. forces that some of them might once have attacked have become the lesser of two evils.
“At the moment the American forces are the ones with the power, the Iraqi Army and anyone else don’t matter,” said the resistance leader. Asked whether he had been part of the insurgency, he answered: “that question puts me in a difficult position.”
Kuehl said areas where the resistance was operating had become much safer for his forces.
“For an American soldier to walk through there is not an issue right now - you’re not going to be hit by an IED, you’re not going to get shot at and that’s unusual – I couldn’t have said that a week ago.”
The area has been one of the most dangerous for U.S. forces in Baghdad. Six 1-5 Cav soldiers and their interpreter were killed here three weeks ago when their Bradlee was hit by an IED. The 1-23 Stryker brigade has taken the majority of its casualties in Amiriyah.
“I’d say that most of them are local guys – now they may have been local guys that were mixed up with something else in the past but from what I’ve seen the training level is not that much,” said Kuehl. “They probably know how to build IEDs and shoot a weapon and that’s about it – I don’t see them as hard-core terrorists I think most of them are just people who want to defend their homes.”
Nice!
Dang! That’s some mighty good news!
Best thing I heard all day.
Oh yeah!
TANKS for the ping,,,Great news...
***********************EXCERPT*********************************
SAMARRA – Nine Iraqi Interior Ministry commandos were wounded in an insurgent assault against a joint U.S.-Iraqi military base in Samarra, a police source said. Dozens of gunmen in pickup trucks, armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machine guns, attacked the base on Sunday afternoon. A roadside bomb exploded against a U.S. military patrol in the Dhubat district, with no news of casualties.
Excellent news.
Tribalism ONLY responds to force. The locals are feeling the “surge” and responding by switching sides. If they feel the Terrorists increasing in strength they would support them instead.
BUMP
It appears Sadr does not have quite the control some may have assumed he had/has over his minions. Then again, maybe he gives the thumbs up for the milita to carry out attacks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.