Camp Gannon/Al Qaim Attacks today

[Moses]

Car bombs hit US military targets

Monday 11 April 2005 6:44 AM GMT


Al-Qaim has witnessed a number of attacks in recent months


Aljazeera reports that five car bombs have hit US military targets in the western Iraqi city of al-Qaim near the border with Syria, wounding at least two US soldiers.

---

Aljazeera, quoting an Iraqi journalist, said two of Monday's attacks took place simultaneously. Three bombs hit a US military headquarters, while a fourth targeted a US military convoy.

Clashes erupted later between fighters and the US troops in the city damaging a number of houses', the journalist told Aljazeera. However, no civilians were injured as they had left before the clashes took place, he said.

A spokesperson for the US marines said on Monday three of their soldiers were wounded in the attack, which occurred outside Camp Gannon, a base in al-Qaim, about 300km west of Baghdad in Anbar province.

Responsibility

The al-Qaida-linked group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said in an internet statement it carried out the car bomb attacks.

Clashes broke out soon after
the anti-US attack in al-Qaim


"The martyrdom-seekers of the al-Qaida brigades carried out three heroic operations against American bases (in al-Qaim) causing them wounds" on a large scale, said the statement on a website. The authenticity of the claim, or the website, could not be independently verified.



"What we have right now is three confirmed suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices," First Lieutenant Kate VandenBossche said.

"The blast was incredible," Yasir al-Hadithis, a police lieutenant, said, adding that US helicopters were flying over the scene of the attack.

Clashes broke out between fighters and US and Iraqi forces immediately after the explosions.

Three civilians, including an eight-year-old boy and an old man, were wounded in ensuing clashes, but it was not clear if they involved US troops, a hospital source said.

"What we have
right now is three confirmed suicide vehicle-borne improvised
explosive devices"
First Lieutenant Kate VandenBossche,
US Marines spokesperson

Al-Qaim has seen frequent outbreaks of violence in recent months. US forces believe weapons and fighters enter Iraq from Syria across the border post near the town.

Syrian authorities deny the charge.

Councillor killed

In other incidents, in Mosul, 400km north of Baghdad, a member of the provincial council was shot dead by an armed group outside the city's main hospital, US forces said on Monday. <br>
Ajil Muhsin Ajil was in his car near the Mosul General Hospital on Sunday when a group of armed men leaped out of another car parked nearby and shot him. His driver was also killed. <br>
It was the second assassination of a provincial politician in the past three weeks. Last month, General Walid Qashmula, the director of the province's anti-corruption office, was killed in a car bomb attack on his convoy. <br>
Anti-US forces in Iraq frequently target officials seen as collaborating with US authorities or working with the US-backed interim government. <br>
The governor of Mosul, also from the Qashmula family, was assassinated in July last year.


Agencies
By <br>
You can find this article at:
english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/846DA47F-2969-4423-8944-1BCAFC9F34AC.htm

[Moses]

....Also Monday, more than 700 U.S. and Iraqi forces swept through a section of Baghdad and took into custody about 65 suspected militants. Lt. Col. Clifford Kent of the 3rd Infantry Division told AP that one Iraqi soldier was wounded in the operation.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43621-2005Apr11.html

[Moses]

Many Iraqis killed in US air attack

Tuesday 12 April 2005 6:39 AM GMT


Children and women are said to be among Monday's fatalities

Twenty Iraqis have been killed and 22 injured after US helicopters and heavy artillery bombed houses in al-Rummana village, north of al-Qaim city, Aljazeera reported.


Seven children, six women and three old men were among the dead, witnesses said, while the injured included 13 children, seven women and two old men.

The witnesses added that the shelling started after US forces, who landed near al-Qaim on Monday night, came under repeated attack.

Early reports indicated one house was completely destroyed and three others partially damaged in the bombing, according to Aljazeera.

On Monday, five car bombs hit US military targets in the western Iraqi city of al-Qaim near the border with Syria, wounding at least two US soldiers.

Separately, the US embassy in Iraq announced that an American contractor working in a reconstruction project had been captured.

Simultaneous attacks

Iraqi journalist Ahmad Khalid told Aljazeera two of Monday's attacks in al-Qaim were simultaneous. Three bombs hit a building used as US military headquarters while a fourth targeted a US troop convoy.

Al-Qaim on the border with Syria has seen frequent gun battles

Clashes erupted later between fighters and US soldiers in the city, damaging a number of houses, the journalist said.

However, no civilians were injured in those clashes as they had fled.

A spokesperson for the US Marines said on Monday three of their soldiers were wounded in the attack, which occurred outside Camp Gannon, a base in al-Qaim, about 300km west of Baghdad in Anbar province.

Late on Monday, armed men opened fire on a police patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, injuring two members of the security service, police Brigadier Sarhat Kadier said.

Narrow escape

Attackers also placed a bomb in the undercarriage of a doctor's car, but the device exploded as the physician entered a Kirkuk store to buy bread, sparing him but wounding two nearby civilians, Kadir said.

"It is the government's opinion that, together with the end of the UN mandate for the stabilisation mission, all the activity of the Polish stabilisation mission should also end"
Jerzy Smajdzinski, Polish Defence Minister

It was not known why the attackers targeted the doctor.

Meanwhile, Poland's defence minister has said the government wants its troops to leave Iraq in the first weeks of 2006 after the authorising UN resolution expires.

"It is the government's opinion that, together with the end of the UN mandate for the stabilisation mission, all the activity of the Polish stabilisation mission should also end," Defence Minister Jerzy Smajdzinski said.

Poland, one of Washington's closest allies in Europe, runs a multi-national stabilisation force in south-central Iraq, where it has about 1700 soldiers.

---

Aljazeera + Agencies


You can find this article at:
english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/09413EAB-D8E4-4C03-A52C-BD7118AC9946.htm

[Moses]

WashPo report on Al-Qaim attack

[Moses]

Posted 4/18/2005 9:12 PM

[Violence is 'off the chart' in area on Iraq border [/size][/url]
By Elliot Blair Smith, USA TODAY

HUSAYBAH, Iraq — Uprooting the criminal gangs that control this violent border town and defeating a small but well-trained insurgent force here may be left to new Iraqi security forces when they begin moving into the western desert this year, Marine Maj. John Reed says.

Until Iraqi forces can be deployed to this remote outpost, a small contingent of Marines is focused on stopping foreign religious warriors, or jihadis, from entering Iraq, and rounding up insurgents that launch attacks here.

Untamed even by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the area has been a haven for insurgents, smugglers and thieves who wage daily battles among themselves in the city, Reed says.

Almost as frequently, he says, the combatants turn their automatic weapons, grenades and mortar blasts on Marines camped at the town's edge.

"We're facing a well-developed, mature insurgency with the support of the local population" of about 100,000 townspeople, Reed says. "There is no Iraqi security force here. They are not effective. There are no police. They are dead or doing something else."

In stark contrast to the inroads multinational forces have made in such hot spots as Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul, Marines in Husaybah have been forced to hunker down in defensive positions. Their base, Camp Gannon, is named for Capt. Rick Gannon who died April 17, 2004, while leading an effort to rescue two sniper squads trapped on a rooftop in the city. Five Marines died that day in a fight against about 100 insurgents.

Unable for safety reasons to patrol the city on foot and in vehicles, troops are limited in their ability to gain important street-level intelligence. So the Marines primarily mount counterattacks on insurgents and criminals who fire into the camp. Last week, the Marines averted disaster when three car bombers backed by 30 insurgents assaulted the camp.

Marine Lt. Col. Tim Mundy, commander of the Third Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, who oversees Husaybah from his base in Al-Qaim, about 10 miles away, says he believes many insurgents recently pushed out of Fallujah and Ramadi by coalition forces regrouped here even as foreign fighters continued to flow in from Syria.

Mundy, 40, says, "This is about as complex a situation as I can imagine any battalion facing."

The insurgents face not only the Marines but also resistance from two Sunni Muslim tribes. The Mahalowis and Salmanis historically controlled the town's cross-border trade. Reed says those tribes dominate the local criminal gangs, police and politicians. They feud with each other but unite to oppose the U.S. presence. "There was always violence here, and now it's much higher. It's off the chart. They're killing each other every day, and we're killing them," Reed says.

Saddam once talked of converting the area's smuggler trails into a major trade route from Syria through Baghdad to Kuwait. That ended with the Gulf War in 1991. In April 2003, U.S. forces entered Baghdad and toppled Saddam, but they didn't reach Husaybah until three months later.

Violence became routine here last fall after U.S. financial aid to the area dried up in anticipation of Iraq's provisional government taking over the local administration. That still hasn't happened.

In October, U.S. forces closed a border gate to constrict the flow into Iraq of foreign jihadis. But with trade shut down, merchants began to convert their shops into bombmaking studios, Reed says. Insurgents hired local youths to set the bombs and mines and fire on U.S. troops, and they terrorized families to get them to cooperate, he says. "When they go into a house, decapitate the men, rape the women and disappear with a few children, I guarantee you the rest are doing what they're told," Reed says.

New Iraqi security forces might help stabilize the situation when they are trained and arrive in the late summer or fall, Reed says. He adds, "If we go it alone, we will have a flash point like Fallujah. We're near that point now."

Reed says he has doubts about this border town's future.

"When the multinational force leaves, maybe the insurgency does," he says. "I don't think so. I think it has a higher goal: to make the new Iraq fail. What the future here is, it's kill them all. It really is. Or make them run somewhere else."