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#1
09-12-2005, 01:11 PM
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Iraqi forces rout terrorists
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[ QUOTE ] BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 10 - Thousands of Iraqi and American troops, backed by airstrikes, swept through the northern city of Tal Afar on Saturday, carrying out house-to-house searches and battling insurgent holdouts in the largest military operation in Iraq in months. American aircraft pounded targets in Tal Afar as the assault began early Saturday, and an Iraqi-led force of 11,000 soldiers began moving into the city, supported by American tanks and armored vehicles from the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment. Witnesses described military helicopters firing rockets into buildings where vastly outnumbered bands of insurgents were holed up. For days, American and Iraqi forces have been encircling Tal Afar, skirmishing with the guerrillas who control the city, in preparation for a final assault. That push began at 2 a.m. on Saturday when the first Iraqi brigades began moving in, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said. On Saturday evening, as fighting died down, Iraq's interior minister, Bayan Jabr, announced that the border with Syria had been closed in Rabia, near Tal Afar. A curfew was imposed, with all travel in and out of Rabia between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. strictly forbidden. The operation in Tal Afar came during a period of unusual violence elsewhere in Iraq, with a series of battles breaking out south of Baghdad after insurgents wearing Iraqi Army uniforms abducted 18 people in a Shiite area and shot them to death late Friday evening. A 19th person escaped to alert the police in Iskandariya. But as police officers arrived to recover the bodies, insurgents ambushed them, and a gun battle ensued that left 12 insurgents and an unknown number of officers dead, police officials said. A second group of police officers was also ambushed en route to the scene, and fought a battle with insurgents that left one police officer dead and 28 wounded.. Tal Afar, which is 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, has long been a transit point for insurgents smuggling weapons and foreign fighters across the Syrian border. Last year American troops led a similar effort to free the city from insurgents. But after the troops withdrew, leaving in place a small security force, the guerrillas returned. Mr. Jaafari and other cabinet members made clear on Saturday that they intended to deal decisively with Tal Afar's insurgents. Mr. Jaafari said the effort to drive the insurgents out of the city was not expected to take more than two days. But in a hint at the destruction the offensive is likely to cause, he said a special government committee had been established to oversee the rebuilding of the city and to compensate citizens of Tal Afar for damaged property. The prime minister compared the effort in Tal Afar to those in Najaf and Falluja after major American-led military offensives. During the past two days, American and Iraqi troops have killed 141 insurgents in Tal Afar and detained 197, Defense Minister Sadoun Dulaimi said Saturday at a news conference in Baghdad. Five Iraqi soldiers were killed and three wounded in that period, he said. Most residents had fled before the invasion. Many of the insurgent fighters are foreign, Mr. Dulaimi said, and the detainees include Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Saudis, Sudanese, Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans. Both the prime minister and Mr. Dulaimi emphasized that the operation, which had been planned for months, was led by Iraqi forces. Mr. Jaafari also emphasized that the operation to clear Tal Afar was begun at the request of "all the different religious and ethnic elements in Tal Afar," including the city's tribal leaders. It began only after efforts to negotiate a peaceful surrender by the insurgents failed, he said. Iraqi state television showed Iraqi troops carrying out house-to-house raids in Tal Afar throughout the day. In the past, major military efforts against insurgents have been led by American troops, and Iraq's government made clear that the operation was partly intended as a show of Iraqi strength. "This shows we have gained experience in resisting the terrorists," Mr. Dulaimi said. "We now have the ability to defeat them anywhere they are hiding." Iraq's health minister described a major effort to assist wounded residents and refugees, with mobile treatment centers set up to treat 20,000 to 30,000 people and assistance from nongovernmental aid groups. But Ali Aubo, the director of a human rights group based in Mosul, east of Tal Afar, said conditions were desperate at a makeshift refugee camp on Tal Afar's western side, with little drinking water or food. Another camp has been set up south of the city, said Mr. Aubo, who left Tal Afar early Saturday afternoon. The offensive was led by the Iraqi Army's Third Division, officials said, but was supported by other brigades and by police commando units that are part of a special Interior Ministry counterinsurgency force. After the operation is complete, the police commandos will maintain control of the city temporarily, then eventually cede authority to a new police force of 1,700 officers, including 1,000 recruited from Tal Afar, said Mr. Jabr, the interior minister. Mr. Dulaimi, a Sunni Arab, suggested that future military operations might be in store in other cities where the insurgency is strong. "We tell our people everywhere Ramadi, Samarra, Rawa and Qaim that we are coming," he said. The operation in Tal Afar came as leading Sunni Arab and Turkmen political parties in Kirkuk announced that they were opposed to Iraq's new constitution and would wage a campaign for its defeat in the Oct. 15 referendum. Speaking Saturday at a joint news conference, the Sunni and Turkmen leaders said the document's provisions on Kirkuk would marginalize them by allowing displaced Kurds to return and dominate the city. The announcement hinted at possible conflict in Kirkuk, a city whose oil riches and volatile ethnic mix has long been viewed as a tinderbox. Kurds have insisted on Kurdish control of Kirkuk, but the city's other ethnic groups have grown increasingly resentful. "What is written in the constitution is reassuring for the Kurds and marginalizing for Arabs and Turkmen, and it is the beginning of a bloody conflict," said Sheik Abdul Rahman Manshid al-Asi, the leader of the Sunni Arab Obeid tribe. "Arabs and Turkmen have the power to deploy themselves and defend Kirkuk and work for Iraq's unity, even if we had to use force of arms." The leader of the Turkmen Front, Saad Edeen Arkij, said Turkmen groups were planning to start forming armed militias to defend their rights against the Kurds. Militias are banned under Iraq's new laws, but the Kurds have been allowed to keep theirs, the pesh merga. Also on Saturday, Mr. Jaafari received a visit from Prime Minister Adnan Badran of Jordan, the highest-ranking Arab leader to visit Baghdad since the American invasion in 2003. The new Iraqi leaders have often complained about the lack of diplomatic representation by other Arab nations in Iraq. In the past week those complaints gained new force, as President Jalal Talabani and others complained about the failure of other Arab nations to send condolences when nearly 1,000 people were killed in a stampede on a bridge in Baghdad. Also on Saturday, gunmen in two cars opened fire on a group of people shopping in the Dawra neighborhood of Baghdad, killing four and wounding seven, Interior Ministry officials said. Elsewhere in the capital, gunmen shot and killed Mohsin Abed al-Qilabi, a member of the Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia. An Oil Ministry official who was in a car with Mr. Qilabi was also killed. In Kirkuk, gunmen opened fire on a group of civilians in the Hurriya neighborhood, killing two and wounding two others, the police in Kirkuk said. In Falluja, American soldiers opened fire on a car carrying two women, killing them both, witnesses and Iraqi officials said. South of Baghdad near Hilla, police intercepted two dump trucks packed with explosives that had been intended to be used for suicide attacks during a Shiite religious festival next week, police officials in Hilla said. The drivers told of a third truck, which was then intercepted outside the Shiite holy city of Karbala, the officials said. [/ QUOTE ] Seems like good news to me. 
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#2
09-12-2005, 01:43 PM
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Re: Iraqi forces rout terrorists
Sounds like great news. The city has been emptied of its inhabitants, who are added to the refugee pile, and is likely to be Fallujah-ised. Meanwhile the article admits that most of the insurgents snuck out before the offensive and notes that after a previous similar offensive, they just came back later, while the rest of it is devoted to the usual daily mayhem and sectarian murder that characterises news from Iraq today. Clearly Iraq is turning a corner.
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#3
09-12-2005, 01:47 PM
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Re: Iraqi forces rout terrorists
[ QUOTE ]
Sounds like great news. The city has been emptied of its inhabitants, who are added to the refugee pile, and is likely to be Fallujah-ised. Meanwhile the article admits that most of the insurgents snuck out before the offensive and notes that after a previous similar offensive, they just came back later, while the rest of it is devoted to the usual daily mayhem and sectarian murder that characterises news from Iraq today. Clearly Iraq is turning a corner. [/ QUOTE ] At least the Iraqis are doing most of the heavy-lifting
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#4
09-12-2005, 01:54 PM
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Re: Iraqi forces rout terrorists
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Sounds like great news. The city has been emptied of its inhabitants, who are added to the refugee pile, and is likely to be Fallujah-ised. Meanwhile the article admits that most of the insurgents snuck out before the offensive and notes that after a previous similar offensive, they just came back later, while the rest of it is devoted to the usual daily mayhem and sectarian murder that characterises news from Iraq today. Clearly Iraq is turning a corner. [/ QUOTE ] At least the Iraqis are doing most of the heavy-lifting [/ QUOTE ] I have my doubts/ "State television lauded the operation for giving Iraqis the lead, with Americans in support, but one source close to US commanders in Nineveh province said that US firepower was decisive and that images of Iraqis searching houses were largely cosmetic." Tal Afar Offensive
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#5
09-12-2005, 02:32 PM
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Re: Iraqi forces rout terrorists
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Sounds like great news. The city has been emptied of its inhabitants, who are added to the refugee pile, and is likely to be Fallujah-ised. Meanwhile the article admits that most of the insurgents snuck out before the offensive and notes that after a previous similar offensive, they just came back later, while the rest of it is devoted to the usual daily mayhem and sectarian murder that characterises news from Iraq today. Clearly Iraq is turning a corner. [/ QUOTE ] At least the Iraqis are doing most of the heavy-lifting [/ QUOTE ] I have my doubts/ "State television lauded the operation for giving Iraqis the lead, with Americans in support, but one source close to US commanders in Nineveh province said that US firepower was decisive and that images of Iraqis searching houses were largely cosmetic." Tal Afar Offensive [/ QUOTE ] I'm sure the Iraqis couldn't handle it without US air support, but I'm cool with that. All the casualties here were Iraqi and not US, which suggests that they were providing most of the front-line support
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#6
09-12-2005, 05:18 PM
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Re: Iraqi forces rout terrorists
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Sounds like great news. The city has been emptied of its inhabitants, who are added to the refugee pile, and is likely to be Fallujah-ised. Meanwhile the article admits that most of the insurgents snuck out before the offensive and notes that after a previous similar offensive, they just came back later, while the rest of it is devoted to the usual daily mayhem and sectarian murder that characterises news from Iraq today. Clearly Iraq is turning a corner. [/ QUOTE ] At least the Iraqis are doing most of the heavy-lifting [/ QUOTE ] I have my doubts/ "State television lauded the operation for giving Iraqis the lead, with Americans in support, but one source close to US commanders in Nineveh province said that US firepower was decisive and that images of Iraqis searching houses were largely cosmetic." Tal Afar Offensive [/ QUOTE ] I'm sure the Iraqis couldn't handle it without US air support, but I'm cool with that. All the casualties here were Iraqi and not US, which suggests that they were providing most of the front-line support [/ QUOTE ] Yay the Iraqi army is now acting as ill-rained cannon fodder. Paradise on earth is round the corner.
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