JUDENHundreds of US soldiers have swept through the western Iraqi town of Haditha, searching homes and seizing suspected insurgents.[...]
An Associated Press report says helicopters dropped US marines near palm groves to block off one side of the town, while other troops established checkpoints and moved into the centre of the city on foot and in armoured vehicles.
"Right now there's a larger threat than should be in Haditha and we're here to tell them that they're not welcome," battalion commander Lt Col Lionel Urquhart told the news agency.[...]
Residents quoted by Reuters said the town was completely occupied and most people were too frightened to leave their homes.
One resident was witnessed being arrested by US marines for having too much ammunition for a licensed weapon.The man was blindfolded and had a code number written on his forehead, as his mother and sisters pleaded with the troops and their Iraqi translator to release him.
I'm sure he'll have a nice room at Abu Ghraib.
How do you like the name of the operation?
Hmmmm...I wonder if this has anything to do with why Haditha is being swept....
That was the botched operation where the "insurgents" had advanced warning of the military's plans to attack and were waiting for them.[In] fighting along the Euphrates River [earlier this month] near the town of Qaim, close to the Syrian border [...] a squad leader [...] lost 10 of his 11 men, split evenly between killed and seriously wounded in action.
When Lima Company returned to base camp here at a towering dam near Haditha, the aftermath of the biggest battle in Iraq this year was evident by the voids.
In one barracks, almost half of the 19 bunks belonging to the 1st Platoon were empty — four killed in action and five sent home with severe wounds.
When will those people succumb to the pressure of collective punishment?Iraqi forces backed by American troops have arrested some 300 suspects overnight in one of the largest joint U.S.-Iraqi military operations to date, the U.S. military said Monday.
The joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive, dubbed Operation Squeeze Play, came as the American military announced that five U.S. soldiers were killed Sunday in northern Iraq.
You think?Meanwhile, it has been reported that the U.S. military plans to consolidate its troops in Iraq into four large air bases, withdrawing from Iraq's towns and cities where they face almost daily attacks.
Under the new plan, the U.S. army will be handing over more than 100 bases occupied by U.S.-led multinational forces to Iraqi command. However, analysts say that this could be a sign that America intends to keep a permanent military presence in Iraq.
Meanwhile, aides to the Muslim Shiite cleric, Muqtada Al Sadr tried to defuse tension between Sunnis and the majority Shiites after the latest spate of sectarian killings.
Gunmen shot dead a senior Iraqi Trade Ministry official on Sunday.
Al Sadr aides met on Sunday with a key Sunnis group, in an attempt to defuse the tensions that have flared between the Shiites and Sunnis. Aljazeera article
But of course, the "insurgents" are only remnant bad guys from Saddam's Sunnis and foreign terrorists.Thousands of Shiites, holding Qurans over their heads, staged huge demonstrations in the southern Iraqi cities of Najaf, Kufa and Nasiriyah on Friday, protesting against the U.S. presence in Iraq. Meanwhile, the country’s Sunnis shut down places of worship to express their anger over alleged sectarian violence against the country’s Sunni minority.
The Shiite protests [...] drew an estimated total of 6,000 demonstrators.
On Wednesday, the Muslim Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for rejecting the U.S. military presence in Iraq by painting Israeli and American flags on the ground outside mosques.
Al-Sadr's calls for anti-U.S. protests [came] after American and Iraqi forces arrested 13 of his supporters in a raid on a Shiite mosque in Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad.[...]
Meanwhile Sunni clerics in Baghdad and Ramadi delivered fiery sermons, calling for shutting down the places of worship for three days to protest alleged Shiite violence against them. Aljazeera article
Ah, yes. Progress in Iraq.Gunmen shot dead a senior Iraqi oil ministry official in Baghdad on Thursday, officials said.
Ali Hameed was attacked Thursday morning outside his home as he was leaving for work.[...]
Rebels have stepped up their attacks in Iraq over recent days, killing more than 400 people in a wave of killing and bomb attacks following the formation of a new government.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated. There may be some delay before your comment is published. It all depends on how much time M has in the day. But please comment!