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BAGHDAD: US Marine jets destroyed a train station in a town near the Syrian border Thursday because insurgents were storing weapons there, the U.S. military said. There has been no report of casualties from the attack, which amounts to the third day of strikes in the area in a week. Marine F/A-18 jets dropped precision-guided 500 pound bombs on the target after "numerous reliable sources" saw about 50 al-Qaeda-linked insurgents using the facility, the statement said. Iraqi officials said the attack was launched about 1 p.m. against the railway station on the southwest part of Qaim, 200 miles west of...

Baghdad, 28 June (AKI) - Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been seen handing out money to evacuee families in the small town of al-Karabla, near al-Qaim on the Syrian border, according to a message posted to various Islamist websites, signed by 'Muhib al-Faruq'. The message is headed "Allah is great: an urgent message from a brother from the town of al-Karabla who swears by what he says". In the message, al-Faruq says he has spoken with the "brother" from al-Karabla, who claims al-Qaeda has given some 700 dollars per household to 85 families whose houses have been destroyed...

KARABILA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. troops, backed by Iraqi forces and U.S. and British aircraft, pushed on Sunday into the northern section of a town near the Syrian border which they say has become a stronghold for foreign fighters. In Baghdad, a suicide bomber eluded a month-long crackdown and killed at least 16 people and wounded 29, many of them police and security guards eating lunch, when he walked into a busy restaurant close to the Green Zone government compound. Karabila, now nearly deserted but once home to 60,000 people, and other areas around the city of Qaim, are the...

<p>KARABILAH, Iraq — U.S. Marines and Iraqi forces battled insurgents on two fronts Saturday in a restive western province, killing about 50 militants in a dusty frontier town in the military's latest campaign to stop foreign fighters infiltrating from neighboring Syria (search).</p>

U.S. F-16 fighter planes dropped a series of 500 lb (220 kg) bombs on insurgent targets in western Iraq overnight as the U.S. military launched a heavy offensive against rebels near the Syrian border. Nine of the powerful bombs were dropped, the U.S. military said, two of them targeting suspected rebel safe houses near the town of Qaim, an insurgent stronghold on the Euphrates river about 20 km (12 miles) east of Iraq's border with Syria.

May was a costly month in Iraq: 700 Iraqis and some 80 Americans died, making it one of the bloodiest months of the war. While bombings in Baghdad decreased over the last two weeks as the result of a major sweep by some 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, backed up by 10,000 troops (Operation Lightning/Operation Thunder), insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians and police have resumed. The continuing attacks have generated the usual sort of stories in the U.S. press: America is mired in a Vietnam-style quagmire. Thus a recent Boston Globe report began by claiming: "Military operations in Iraq have...

Iraqi Shias 'tortured and shot' The mutilated bodies of 10 Iraqi Shia Muslim pilgrims have been found in the desert near the town of Qaim, close to the Syrian border, Iraqi police say.They are thought to have been killed as they travelled back from Syria. The murdered pilgrims had apparently been blindfolded, tied up and shot in the head, police said. The corpses bore marks of torture. In other violence, seven people died in two suicide bombings in the northern town of Sinjar, officials said. The dead Shia pilgrims are thought to be from southern Iraq. Iraqi officials said...

Al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had fled the country after being seriously injured in a U.S. missile attack, a British newspaper reported on Sunday, quoting a senior commander of the Iraqi insurgency. Al-Zarqawi has shrapnel lodged in his chest and may have been moved to Iran, The Sunday Times newspaper reported, adding his supporters may try to move him on to another country for an operation. The paper quoted an unnamed insurgency commander as saying the Jordanian-born militant was wounded three weeks ago when a U.S. missile hit his convoy near the northwestern Iraqi city of al Qaim....

MILITARY OFFENSIVE IN IRAQ   May 16, 2005   A published report on a week-long battle between Marines and insurgents in western Iraq, near the Syrian border, said Marines were outgunned. A discussion with embedded reporter Ellen Knickmeyer, Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post, about her report.   MARGARET WARNER: Ellen Knickmeyer, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Give us a sense, first of all, how big this Marine offensive was in the west, and why did they launch it now? ELLEN KNICKMEYER: It was the largest operation they've had since Fallujah. At one point they had -- when...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq’s most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search ), has been seriously wounded, according to a doctor who claims to have treated him last week. The doctor told an Iraqi reporter in the western city of Ramadi that Zarqawi was bleeding heavily when he was brought into hospital on Wednesday. After treating his wounds the doctor tried to persuade him to remain, but the Jordanian-born terrorist’s minders drove him away. The claim was supported yesterday by a senior commander in the Iraqi resistance who had been to Ramadi to investigate the report. The doctor, who refused to...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — American fighter jets flattened a suspected insurgent safe house near the Syrian border, the U.S. military said Friday, and hundreds of U.S. troops conducted house-to-house searches in remote desert villages for followers of Iraq's most-wanted militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "... U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up raids in recent weeks. Iraq's government announced Thursday the capture of two more wanted insurgents — one a bomb maker with links to al-Zarqawi identified as Seif-Eddine Mustafa al-Naimi, the other a financier for an insurgent group linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq identified as Amar Farid Abdul-Qader Ashur...

QAIM, Iraq (AP) - 0513iraq American warplanes roared over desert villages while armed militants roamed this town's rubble-strewn streets Friday as more than 1,000 U.S. forces hunted down followers of Iraq's most wanted terrorist near the Syrian border. American forces have met little resistance since the first two days of Operation Matador, aimed at clearing a region believed to be a haven for foreign fighters allied to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who have been slipping over the border from Syria, the military said. American intelligence indicates the insurgents are either in hiding or have fled the region, U.S. Capt....

QAIM, Iraq (AP) - 0513iraq Iraqi fighters toting machine guns and grenade launchers swaggered through the rubble-strewn streets of this town on the Syrian border Friday, setting up checkpoints and preparing to do battle despite a major U.S. offensive aimed at rooting out followers of Iraq's most-wanted militant. The remote desert region is a haven for foreign combatants who slip across the border along ancient smuggling routes and collect weapons to use in some of Iraq's deadliest attacks, according to the U.S. military. But the fighters who remain in this Sunni town some 200 miles west of Baghdad insist there...

QAIM, Iraq - American warplanes roared over desert villages while armed militants roamed this town's rubble-strewn streets Friday as more than 1,000 U.S. forces hunted down followers of Iraq's most wanted terrorist near the Syrian border. American forces have met little resistance since the first two days of Operation Matador, aimed at clearing a region believed to be a haven for foreign fighters allied to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who have been slipping over the border from Syria, the military said. American intelligence indicates the insurgents are either in hiding or have fled the region, U.S. Capt. Jeffrey Pool...

2 more Gulfport-based Marines confirmed injured By KATE MAGANDY THE SUN HERALD GULFPORT - The Marine Corps confirmed two additional Gulfport-based Marines were injured when an Amtrac hit an improvised explosive devise in Iraq on Wednesday. 1st Sgt. Robert Holcomb at the Marine Reserves center in Gulfport said Lance Cpl. Zachary Schudrowitz of Ocean Springs and Lance Cpl. Terrance Bullock of Hattiesburg were injured in the IED explosion. Both men suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries, Holcomb said. Schudrowitz had burns and took shrapnel to the torso and Bullock took shrapnel to the torso. The Sun Herald reported in Friday's...

WESTERN IRAQ -- "These Marines are great. America ought to be very proud of its Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen; they're doing great work out here." So Marine Col. Stephen Davis, the commander of Regimental Combat Team 2 (RCT-2), told me once we had a chance to talk near al Qaim, Iraq. Davis is in charge of Operation Matador, an effort to bring law and order to the bulk of Iraq's vast, western al Anbar province, which makes up one-third of the country. What these Marines are doing now near the Syrian border is what they did months ago in...

"This is the wild wild west. This is Qaim, at the western edge of Anbar province, bordering on Syria. It is a dusty, arid and lawless region, with large towns by the Euphrates River, which snakes into Iraq from Syria. Americans are attacked on a daily basis by a recalcitrant community..." - Every time the wind blows, an Asia Times Online series by Nir Rosen, October 2003 About 1,000 US Marines supported by armor and attack helicopters began the major offensive in west-central Iraq on May 7. Since then, the sweep, dubbed Operation Matador, has seen some of the heaviest...

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...

Some troops ran through thick, black smoke and pulled out wounded men, lining up some of them within feet of the fire. Some of the wounded suffered third-degree burns. Seared flesh hung from their bodies. Most of the wounded had severe burns on their arms and faces. Others had shrapnel wounds. A 3-inch shard of metal protruded from one Marine's abdomen. Marines who survived the blast said they believed that four troops died in the vehicle. Officials on the scene and in Baghdad declined to confirm the casualty toll. Lt. Sam McAmis, who commanded a Marine platoon in the operation,...

Gunmen Kidnap Governor of Iraqi Province BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Gunmen kidnapped the governor of Iraq's western Anbar province Tuesday and told his family he would be released when U.S. forces withdraw from Qaim, the site of a major offensive against followers of Iraq's most-wanted militant, relatives said. Gov. Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was seized as he drove from Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi, his brother, Hammad, told The Associated Press. The kidnappers later called the family and said they were holding the governor until U.S. forces pull out of the Syrian border town about 200 miles west...