Sunday, June 29, 2003
KEEP YOUR HELMET ON!
U.S. Searches for Guerrillas in Sweep Across Central Iraq
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
ALAD, Iraq, June 29 — American military forces carried out a series of predawn raids across central Iraq today, hoping to root out guerrilla groups that have been attacking soldiers and to project an intimidating display of power.
The raids involved thousands of soldiers and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles. Starting about 1 this morning, the raids struck homes, farms and abandoned buildings from the northern edge of Baghdad to the city of Tikrit.
"We want to send a message of `Don't mess with us,' " said Army Lt. Col. Aubrey Garner, commander of the Silver Lions Battalion, which is part of the Fourth Infantry Division.
"They will see that we have the flexibility to bring firepower anywhere and anytime," he continued. "The ability is almost magical."
In raids about 40 miles north of Baghdad, Colonel Garner's battalion seized a small arsenal that included more than a dozen guns ranging from Iraqi pistols to Kalashnikov automated rifles and ammunition.
They also arrested three men, including a potentially valuable member of Iraq's former military intelligence service named Amir Ismael Mohammed. Mr. Mohammed was found with five different identity cards, and the house he was in contained technical publications on missile guidance systems and printouts of an Internet search on weapons production.
The Associated Press reported that soldiers in another raid nearby had arrested a man suspected of recruiting young men to launch attacks on Americans.
But Army units fanned out to dozens of different locations, generally moving in on their targets around 2 a.m. and often interrogating people until well after the sun had come up.
Airplanes backed up the ground troops, dropping low-level flares that provided just enough light to let soldiers see easily with their night-vision goggles.
Dubbed Operation Sidewinder, the fast-moving and nearly simultaneous raids were focused most intensively on villages and towns north of Baghdad, including Balad. The area, which some have nicknamed the "arc of danger," has been the staging ground for an accelerating stream of often deadly guerrilla attacks on American troops as well as on electricity and water installations.
Those attacks hit a new intensity in the past week, killing more than a half-dozen American soldiers in Baghdad and areas to the north. Among the victims were two soldiers kidnapped in their Humvee near here on Tuesday and, after nearly four days of exhaustive manhunts, found dead on Friday.
But the victims also included a soldier who was shot in the head at point-blank range while shopping at an outdoor market in Baghdad on Friday and numerous ambushes with rocket-propelled grenades and remotely detonated bombs.
The rising number of soldiers killed and wounded has become a major worry for American occupation officials.
L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority and the top civilian administrator in charge of Iraq, said tonight he was "certainly not panicked" by the attacks and that Americans had in the past two weeks begun receiving tips from Iraqi citizens.
"Plain old citizens are now confident enough that they are willing to provide us with information," Mr. Bremer said in a meeting with several reporters tonight. "Most of it is pretty good."
But it was unclear that today's campaign produced concrete results. Unlike a similarly massive set of raids earlier this month, the ones today did not lead to any major firefights — an indication that the raids had not located groups devoted to violent attacks against coalition troops.
The two raids carried out by the Silver Lions Battalion produced tantalizing hints of militant activity, as well as of people who might still be loyal to the Baath Party of the former president Saddam Hussein.
But the raids did not uncover what intelligence officials had been hoping to find. One raid, against a compound that had at one time been used by the Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia groups, turned up little more than two families of squatters.
In a second raid on a farmhouse several miles south of here, officials had been hoping to capture a high-ranking intelligence officer named Col. Asad Adeen.
An extensive search of the farmhouse and several adjoining buildings produced one technical pamphlet written by Colonel Adeen and one of his relatives. Soldiers also found a considerable cache of automated weapons, including two Kalashnikovs that were concealed by women under their bed blankets.
The soldiers quickly rounded up 14 men, handcuffed them and covered their heads with sacks to keep them disoriented. Arabic-speaking interrogators then quizzed most of the men for the next several hours.
But in the end, the soldiers released all but three of the men. "The target was Adeen, not these other people or members of his family," said Colonel Garner. And even the three men that soldiers arrested for further questioning, he said, were not necessarily organizers of any violent attacks or underground members of a Baath Party resistance group.
Meanwhile, attacks on American troops continued on Saturday and today. Two soldiers were wounded and an Iraqi civilian was killed today after coming under attack while in a convoy on the road to Baghdad International Airport
|
U.S. Searches for Guerrillas in Sweep Across Central Iraq
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
ALAD, Iraq, June 29 — American military forces carried out a series of predawn raids across central Iraq today, hoping to root out guerrilla groups that have been attacking soldiers and to project an intimidating display of power.
The raids involved thousands of soldiers and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles. Starting about 1 this morning, the raids struck homes, farms and abandoned buildings from the northern edge of Baghdad to the city of Tikrit.
"We want to send a message of `Don't mess with us,' " said Army Lt. Col. Aubrey Garner, commander of the Silver Lions Battalion, which is part of the Fourth Infantry Division.
"They will see that we have the flexibility to bring firepower anywhere and anytime," he continued. "The ability is almost magical."
In raids about 40 miles north of Baghdad, Colonel Garner's battalion seized a small arsenal that included more than a dozen guns ranging from Iraqi pistols to Kalashnikov automated rifles and ammunition.
They also arrested three men, including a potentially valuable member of Iraq's former military intelligence service named Amir Ismael Mohammed. Mr. Mohammed was found with five different identity cards, and the house he was in contained technical publications on missile guidance systems and printouts of an Internet search on weapons production.
The Associated Press reported that soldiers in another raid nearby had arrested a man suspected of recruiting young men to launch attacks on Americans.
But Army units fanned out to dozens of different locations, generally moving in on their targets around 2 a.m. and often interrogating people until well after the sun had come up.
Airplanes backed up the ground troops, dropping low-level flares that provided just enough light to let soldiers see easily with their night-vision goggles.
Dubbed Operation Sidewinder, the fast-moving and nearly simultaneous raids were focused most intensively on villages and towns north of Baghdad, including Balad. The area, which some have nicknamed the "arc of danger," has been the staging ground for an accelerating stream of often deadly guerrilla attacks on American troops as well as on electricity and water installations.
Those attacks hit a new intensity in the past week, killing more than a half-dozen American soldiers in Baghdad and areas to the north. Among the victims were two soldiers kidnapped in their Humvee near here on Tuesday and, after nearly four days of exhaustive manhunts, found dead on Friday.
But the victims also included a soldier who was shot in the head at point-blank range while shopping at an outdoor market in Baghdad on Friday and numerous ambushes with rocket-propelled grenades and remotely detonated bombs.
The rising number of soldiers killed and wounded has become a major worry for American occupation officials.
L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority and the top civilian administrator in charge of Iraq, said tonight he was "certainly not panicked" by the attacks and that Americans had in the past two weeks begun receiving tips from Iraqi citizens.
"Plain old citizens are now confident enough that they are willing to provide us with information," Mr. Bremer said in a meeting with several reporters tonight. "Most of it is pretty good."
But it was unclear that today's campaign produced concrete results. Unlike a similarly massive set of raids earlier this month, the ones today did not lead to any major firefights — an indication that the raids had not located groups devoted to violent attacks against coalition troops.
The two raids carried out by the Silver Lions Battalion produced tantalizing hints of militant activity, as well as of people who might still be loyal to the Baath Party of the former president Saddam Hussein.
But the raids did not uncover what intelligence officials had been hoping to find. One raid, against a compound that had at one time been used by the Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia groups, turned up little more than two families of squatters.
In a second raid on a farmhouse several miles south of here, officials had been hoping to capture a high-ranking intelligence officer named Col. Asad Adeen.
An extensive search of the farmhouse and several adjoining buildings produced one technical pamphlet written by Colonel Adeen and one of his relatives. Soldiers also found a considerable cache of automated weapons, including two Kalashnikovs that were concealed by women under their bed blankets.
The soldiers quickly rounded up 14 men, handcuffed them and covered their heads with sacks to keep them disoriented. Arabic-speaking interrogators then quizzed most of the men for the next several hours.
But in the end, the soldiers released all but three of the men. "The target was Adeen, not these other people or members of his family," said Colonel Garner. And even the three men that soldiers arrested for further questioning, he said, were not necessarily organizers of any violent attacks or underground members of a Baath Party resistance group.
Meanwhile, attacks on American troops continued on Saturday and today. Two soldiers were wounded and an Iraqi civilian was killed today after coming under attack while in a convoy on the road to Baghdad International Airport
