US jets pounded targets north and west of the capital yesterday, blasting positions in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah and around a northern town astride a major smuggling route, the US military and witnesses said.
American warplanes fired missiles on a building used by associates of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the third day of targeting in Fallujah, a hotbed of Sunni Muslim insurgents bent on driving coalition forces from the country. At least five were killed, including a woman and a child, said Dr Ahmad Thair of the Fallujah General Hospital.
PHOTO: AFP
Warplanes also hammered Tal Afar, a northern city near the border with Syria suspected of lying on smuggling route for foreign fighters. The operations are intended to return the city 50km west of Mosul to control of the interim Iraqi government. At least a dozen people died in the attack, Iraq's Interior Ministry said.
The attacks in Fallujah on Wednesday raised plumes of smoke but left no extensive damage or signs of weakening the Sunni militants who have steadily expanded their control of this city about 48km west of Baghdad.
After Wednesday's attacks, bands of fighters, many wearing loose black pajama-like pants and T-shirts, lounged outside abandoned buildings facing the American lines, seeking to escape the intense sunlight of a day when temperatures topped 45?C.
Most hid their faces with Arab head scarves or ski masks. Some quenched their thirst with water from coolers beside them. Most appeared to be in their late teens or early 20s and 30s, but a few looked as old as 50.
Elsewhere in this city of 300,000, fighters patrolled the streets in new American pickups. One resident, 33-year-old Abu Rihab, said they were part of a 16-vehicle fleet commandeered between Jordan and Baghdad.
The Fallujah Brigade, which the Americans organized in May to maintain security after the Marines lifted a three-week siege, has all but disappeared, along with virtually all signs of Iraqi state authority.
Members of the Iraqi National Guard, which was supposed to back up the Fallujah Brigade, fled the city after one of their commanders was executed by insurgents for allegedly spying for the Americans. Local police operate under the tacit control of the militants.
The airstrikes, in the eastern and southern parts of this city, targeted a militant "command and control headquarters" that has been coordinating attacks against US and Iraqi forces, the US military said in a statement.
"Initial assessments indicate there are no noncombatant casualties," the US statement added. "Enemy casualty figures cannot be confirmed."
Hospital officials said two people were killed in the attack but did not say whether they were insurgents. Late Tuesday, US jets dropped several bombs and tank and artillery units fired rounds into Fallujah in retaliation for militant attacks on Marine positions outside the city, said Marine spokesman Lieutenant Colonel T.V. Johnson.
Despite the formal end of the US occupation on June 28, the interim Iraqi government has lost control over key Sunni Muslim cities such as Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra. The commander of the US 1st Infantry Division said his troops and their Iraqi allies would regain control of Samarra before Iraq's general election expected in January.
Major General John Batiste said he was confident that a combination of diplomacy, US aid and Army intimidation would persuade the city's 500 insurgents to give up. Otherwise, he said, the Americans would use force.
However, General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that it could be months before US and Iraqi authorities are prepared to take those cities back.
"Part of that strategy is that Iraqi security forces must be properly equipped, trained and led to participate in these security operations, and then once it's over, can sustain the peace in a given city," Myers told Pentagon reporters Tuesday.
That appeared to be a tacit acknowledgment that even if the Americans regained the cities by force, the Iraqis would not be able to control them.
In Fallujah, real power is in the hands of the "Mujahedeen Shura Council," a six-member body led by Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi, spiritual leader of the militants and the undisputed ruler of the city since May.
The mujahedeen run their own courts that try people suspected of spying for the Americans or other offenses. Abu Rihab said that since May, they have put to death about 30 people convicted of spying. It was impossible to confirm the figure.
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