Battles
Rage Across Saddam Heartland
By Patrick
Cockburn in Baghdad
The Independent
14 June 2003
American troops said yesterday that they had killed 27 Iraqis who ambushed
a tank with rocket-propelled grenades north of Baghdad, bringing to
97 the number of "subversives" killed in two days of clashes.
Seventy Iraqis were said
to have been killed in a US operation against an alleged terrorist training
camp 90 miles north-west of Baghdad, in a battle that started on Thursday.
The number of attacks on
US forces north and west of the capital has risen sharply in recent
weeks. Although President Bush has declared major combat in Iraq is
over, some 40 American soldiers have been killed since the beginning
of May. At that rate, American casualties since the war may soon exceed
those suffered during the war itself.
The US has launched two operations
this week to try to stop sporadic guerrilla attacks in the Sunni Muslim
heartland north of Baghdad. Some of the resistance is being stoked by
leaflets one of which may have been written by Saddam Hussein
himself that have called for armed resistance against the US occupation.
In the tank attack, guerrillas
fired rocket-propelled grenades at a patrol of the 4th Infantry Division
in Balad, a farming town of 20,000 people, 60 miles from Baghdad. A
US statement said: "The tanks returned fire, killing four of the
attackers and forcing the remainder to flee. Tanks and Bradley fighting
vehicles, reinforced with AH-64 Apache helicopters, pursued the enemy
personnel, killing 23 of the attackers."
No American soldiers were
killed or injured in the attack, in which the attackers sprung from
a thicket of reeds on an isolated rural road.
It is not clear how many
Iraqi casualties really were fighters. In rural areas, Iraqi civilians
invariably own weapons, which may include rocket-propelled grenade launchers
and machine-guns. "A man in Iraq does not think he is really a
man unless he has a gun, the bigger the better," said one Iraqi
observer. In an indication of growing US anxiety about the number of
attacks, some 4,000 American troops have been searching an area north-east
of Balad during the past five days in "Operation Peninsula Strike".
It is the biggest single operation against guerrillas since Baghdad
fell.
In another operation, a US
military spokesman said the 101st Airborne and special operations units
had attacked a "terrorist" training camp near Haditha in north-west
Iraq, after an Apache helicopter was shot down on Thursday. One US soldier
was wounded. The two-man crew of the helicopter were both rescued. Some
70 to 80 Sam-7 shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles, more than 75 rocket-propelled
grenades and 20 AK-47 rifles were found.
Separately, US troops arrested
74 people described as al-Qa'ida sympathisers in a raid on Thursday
near the northern city of Kirkuk.
The US portrays its operations
this week as "the continuous effort to eradicate Baath party loyalists,
paramilitary groups and other subversive elements". But there are
signs that many of the guerrilla attacks are spontaneous or in reaction
to heavy-handed searches by US troops. In farming areas, Iraqis bitterly
accuse US soldiers of entering women's quarters and of spying on the
women with night-vision goggles.
The atmosphere remains very
edgy with many Iraqis claiming there are more guerrilla attacks and
heavier US losses than reported, though there is no evidence. Since
the dissolution of the 350,000-strong Iraqi army by the US last month,
the country is awash with weapons and men, now without jobs but trained
to fight.