US troops repelled an attack by Sunni Arab insurgents who used suicide car bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons in a coordinated assault against the city's main government building and two US observation posts.
There were no reports of US casualties in the 90-minute attack on Monday, the second in the past 10 days against the government headquarters for Anbar Province, a center of the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency.
In Baghdad, US and Iraqi forces were engaged in a gunbattle with about 50 insurgents in the Sunni Arab district of Azamiyah, the US military said. Five insurgents were killed and two Iraqi troops were wounded, the US said.
PHOTO: AP
The fighting provided fresh evidence that the insurgency is alive and well in Sunni-dominated areas such as Anbar despite last month's decline in US deaths.
The latest attack here began when two suicide car bombers sped toward the government building, known as Government Center, using a road closed to civilian traffic, Marine Captain Andrew del Gaudio said.
US Marines fired flares to warn the vehicles to stop and when they refused, the Americans opened fire with .50 caliber machine guns from the building's sandbagged rooftop. The vehicles turned and sped away but exploded on a main road, sending a huge fireball into the sky and triggering a shock wave that damaged the US post, del Gaudio said.
As part of the assault, other insurgents fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at Marine positions at the roof of the Government Center, which includes the office of the Anbar governor, and at another observation post, del Gaudio said.
A US Army tank fired a 120mm shell at a small white mosque where about 15 insurgents were shooting at the Government Center, del Gaudio said. The round damaged part of the minaret and the firing ceased, he said.
The total number of insurgent casualties was unknown. But Lieutenant Carlos Goetz said Marines killed at least three insurgents firing mortar rounds toward the Government Center.
In Baghdad, fighting erupted in Azamiyah before dawn when an Iraqi army patrol came under fire, a US statement said. Four hours later, a US-Iraqi checkpoint in the area was attacked by gunmen, prompting the command to send US and Iraqi reinforcements. The US statement said clashes continued until early afternoon.
The attack in Ramadi was the biggest since April 8, when insurgents besieged the Government Center until US jets blasted several buildings used by gunmen to fire on the Marines.
Before the uptick in violence, US officials had been encouraged by a relative lull in Anbar, suggesting that it was due to weariness among ordinary Sunni Arabs who were turning against al-Qaeda-led insurgent groups.
Last week, Major General Rick Lynch told reporters in Baghdad that insurgent attacks in Anbar were down to an average of 18 a day -- compared with a daily average of 27 last October. At the same time, US deaths for March numbered 31 -- the lowest monthly figure since February 2004.
However, US deaths have been rising this month. Of the 47 American service members reported killed in Iraq so far this month, at least 28 have died in Anbar.
In order to quell sectarian unrest, US officials have been urging the Iraqis to speed up formation of a national unity government of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. But the process has stalled due to Sunni and Kurdish objections to the Shiite candidate to head the new government, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Prospects for a quick end to the stalemate were in doubt yesterday, as al-Jaafari's Dawa party pledged to support him for another term as long as he wants the job. Al-Jaafari has refused to give up the nomination that he won in a Shiite caucus last February.
Parliament had been set to meet Monday to try to break the deadlock, but the session was postponed after Shiite politicians gave assurances they could reach a decision on al-Jaafari themselves without a bruising parliamentary fight.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS