U.S. Marines Mount Second Drive on Insurgents in West Iraq

05/25/2005

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
NY Times
Published: May 25, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 25 - American and Iraqi military forces swept into the western Iraqi city of Haditha before dawn today and fought street battles with Islamist fighters in a new offensive to stamp out the violent insurgency that has plagued this country’s restive west.

More than 1,000 troops, including American marines and sailors and Iraqi Special Forces troops, took part in the fighting in Haditha, a Sunni Arab city on the Euphrates River about 180 miles west of Baghdad that American military officials say is a stopover point for Islamist fighters who slip through Iraq’s porous border with Syria.

Ten insurgents were killed and two marines were wounded in the fighting, the American military said.

It was the second large attack by American troops in two weeks in western Iraq, where Islamic militants move relatively freely among Sunni Arab tribes in vast stretches of desert. The offensive was part of a broader effort to weaken networks of insurgents, including that of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who has claimed responsibility for much of the bloodshed here and is believed to have been in the area earlier this year.

The offensive came as an unconfirmed posting appeared on an Islamist Internet site stating that Mr. Zarqawi had fled Iraq and was in serious but stable condition with a bullet wound in his right lung, one day after another Web site stated he had been injured.

American forces fanned out in and around Hadithathis morning. A gun battle began when insurgents fired on them in the center of the city at about 4 a.m., the American military said in a statement. A cleric was among the attackers, the statement said, and shot at marines with an AK-47 assault rifle, the military said. Six insurgents were killed in the battle and two marines were wounded, the statement said.

Troops in Haditha fought several more gun battles throughout the day today, killing four more insurgents. In a massive search operation, they closed off sections of the town, setting up checkpoints to catch fleeing insurgents. Troops then looked in buildings and businesses looking for insurgents and stockpiles of weapons and ammunition.

Iraq’s new government has struggled to contain the violent insurgency that has killed more than 550 people since the makeup of the government was announced late last month, and today’s attack in Haditha was another effort to weaken fighters and their networks in the west. Iraqi troops have also been chipping away at insurgent networks, staging large raids in several Iraqi cities and arresting hundreds of Iraqis who authorities suspect have links to the insurgency.

The Islamic Internet posting on Mr. Zarqawi was written by a man who identified himself only as Salah. He cited friends he said were close to militants in Iraq as saying that Mr. Zarqawi had made his way secretly to a neighboring Arab country, accompanied by two doctors, one from Saudi Arabia and the other from Sudan. The posting, unconfirmed, called Mr. Zarqawi’s condition was stable, but also said that he was having difficulty breathing.

American military officers earlier this month said that they had come close to capturing Mr. Zarqawi in February. The commanders said a pickup carrying Mr. Zarqawi made an abrupt U-turn near an American checkpoint between the cities of Hit and Haditha, 100 miles east of the Syrian border, setting off a chase. The officers said Mr. Zarqawi jumped from the pickup and hid beneath an overpass, leaving his driver and another man to be captured, along with Mr. Zarqawi’s laptop computer and more than $100,000 in cash.

Earlier this week, an Iraqi newspaper reported that Mr. Zarqawi had been in a hospital in Haditha.