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Warplanes pound sections of fallujah { April 29 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48811-2004Apr28.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48811-2004Apr28.html
Warplanes Pound Sections of Fallujah
U.S. Military Targets Insurgents; Joint Patrols With Iraqis Delayed
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 29, 2004; Page A01
FALLUJAH, Iraq, April 28 -- U.S. warplanes on Wednesday dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs and fired powerful howitzers at what military officials said were Sunni Muslim insurgents who had fired on Marines ringing this city.
The airstrikes in three different sections of Fallujah were the most aggressive American response to guerrilla attacks since U.S. commanders and Iraqi officials signed a cease-fire deal earlier this month.
With tensions on the rise, Marine commanders postponed plans to conduct joint patrols of the city on Thursday with Iraqi policemen and civil defense troops. The patrols, regarded as a key element of the cease-fire agreement, now are scheduled to begin on Friday, a senior Marine officer said.
The delay was a setback to U.S. attempts to address the insurgent threat in Fallujah with methods other than a resumption of full-scale Marine raids. The patrols, which are to focus on sections of Fallujah not under Marine control, are intended to embolden Iraqi forces to take the lead in controlling the city.
The decision to postpone the patrols came a few hours after fighter jets screeched over the flat, dusty city on bombing runs. Warplanes dropped 10 bombs on the southern end of the city, sending plumes of gray smoke billowing into the air. They also bombed the northeastern section of Fallujah and the northern district known as Jolan, where insurgent activity has been particularly intense.
After insurgents fired on Marines near the city's train station, located on the northern fringe, two AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters were summoned to the scene, and buzzed over northern Fallujah all afternoon. After dark, the helicopters were replaced by an AC-130 Spectre gunship, which pounded away at targets, with the thump-thump of its 105mm howitzer echoing across the darkened city.
The chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, insisted the cease-fire agreement reached April 19 was still in effect. He said that between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon, there were 11 violations of the cease-fire, including 10 attacks with small arms and one attack involving mortar fire.
Kimmitt said civic leaders who agreed to the cease-fire -- with promises that they would compel insurgents to stop attacks and hand over their weapons -- "have not delivered." He emphasized that U.S. commanders "would like to be part of a nonmilitary solution," but added that they were frustrated by the apparent inability of city negotiators to rein in the rebels or to identify those responsible for a Feb. 14 attack on a city police station and the March 31 killings of four American security contractors.
"They continue to tell us that they represent the people, but they don't deliver," Kimmitt said. "We don't see the weapons. We don't see the foreign fighters. We don't see any intelligence suggesting who was involved in the attack on the police station in February nor the killing of the Blackwater contractors last month."
In Washington, President Bush said, "There are pockets of resistance, and our military along with Iraqis will make sure it's secure." He also said, "Most of Fallujah is returning to normal."
But in Fallujah, the situation appeared anything but normal on Wednesday. Observed from a Marine forward operating base in the city, most streets appeared deserted. The roar of fighter jets, the thud of explosions and the sight of massive smoke clouds rising into the air punctuated the afternoon.
The laser-guided bombs were dropped after a Marine unit on the city's southern edge came under fire, according to Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, the commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. One American was wounded in the incident.
"We are enemy-focused," Byrne said. "Anywhere he raises himself up and challenges us, we will eliminate him."
At an afternoon news conference, Kimmitt provided details of an AC-130 attack on Tuesday evening that was captured on live television and broadcast around the world. Shortly after 10 p.m., Kimmitt said, insurgents attacked Marine positions in the city. At 10:30, military aircraft observed insurgents in a flatbed truck and a sedan driving through the streets with their lights off, dropping off and picking up multiple passengers at once, which Kimmitt described as "a common tactic we've seen used by enemy forces prior to an attack."
The AC-130s fired on the vehicles and destroyed them, resulting in "significant secondary explosions from the ammunition they were carrying" over the next 20 minutes, Kimmitt said. The insurgents escaped to a nearby building, which also was fired upon, resulting in additional explosions because of the "large amounts of ordnance inside the building," Kimmitt said.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, three occupation soldiers died in fighting.
One American soldier died from wounds suffered in a grenade attack on his vehicle Tuesday near the northern town of Tall Afar, near Mosul. Three other soldiers in the vehicle were wounded. A Ukrainian soldier was killed and two were injured during an ambush on a military patrol near the town of Suwayrah, southeast of Baghdad, military officials said.
A U.S. military spokesman later said that a second coalition soldier died from wounds suffered in that attack.
In southern Iraq, witnesses reported clashes Wednesday night near the town of Kufa, the base for militant cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose militia has fought U.S. troops off and on for the past three weeks.
The conflict in Fallujah, predominantly inhabited by Sunni Muslims, has had a ripple effect in other towns in the Sunni Triangle that stretches north and west from Baghdad, according to U.S. military commanders.
"Sunni opportunists and cells of Saddam loyalists" have tried to take advantage of the situation in Fallujah to foment unrest in towns such as Balad, Baqubah and Samarra, north of Baghdad, said Army Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, which controls the north-central section of the country. Batiste spoke at a news conference in Tikrit, the home town of Saddam Hussein, on the day the former president turned 67.
Chan reported from Baghdad and Tikrit. Special correspondents Bassam Sebti in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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