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Us bombs van but finds no mortar { November 13 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/international/middleeast/13BAGH.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/international/middleeast/13BAGH.html
November 13, 2003
NEW TACTICS
U.S. Mounts Fierce Air Battle Against Suspected Guerrilla Targets in Baghdad
By DEXTER FILKINS
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 13 — American forces carried out two ferocious airstrikes Wednesday evening against suspected loyalists of Saddam Hussein's regime, signaling a new and more aggressive strategy to regain the initiative in the guerrilla war now raging across the country's Sunni Muslim heartland.
American military officers said Wednesday evening that they had called in an AC-130 gunship to destroy a warehouse in southern Baghdad that was suspected of serving as a base for guerrillas planning actions against American forces. They said an Apache helicopter had been called in to cripple an Iraqi van suspected of carrying a mortar used to mount attacks on Americans.
Two Iraqis were killed and three were wounded in the strike against the van, officials said, while five other men traveling inside were taken prisoner. Casualties at the warehouse, which was in ruins, were unknown early Thursday morning. American troops sealed off the neighborhood.
"These are offensive operations," Capt. David Gercken of the Army's First Armored Division said. "We are telling these guys, `You aren't going to do this anymore.' "
Air attacks have been rare since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1. This month, American commanders called in airstrikes on suspected Iraqi targets near where two American helicopters had been shot down outside Falluja and Tikrit.
Captain Gercken said the attacks Wednesday evening were the opening round of an operation in Baghdad expected to last several days. He said the strikes had been made possible by a recent influx of intelligence, most of it from local Iraqis, that began to flow to the Americans after recent suicide attacks against police buildings and relief agencies.
The strikes Wednesday came a day after the senior American military commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, outlined a new strategy to crush the insurgency that is now generating an average of 30 attacks a day against Americans.
General Sanchez said the war here was at "turning point" and, certain it was turning in the Americans' favor, he promised to wage it with greater intensity than ever before.
The American attacks, which officials said had been in the works for some time, were begun hours after a truck bomb attack against an Italian military police compound in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya.
The attacks Wednesday were reminiscent of the tactics employed by the Israeli military against Palestinian guerrillas; high-tech weaponry of overwhelming force, directed at specific targets, often in urban areas.
As if to signal that the American military was loosening restraints, a military spokesman said tonight that the Army had used one of the most lethal weapons at its disposal to destroy the warehouse: an AC-130 gunship armed with a rapid-fire 105-millimeter cannon.
Just after sunset, the gunship fired 18 cannon rounds into the warehouse and 50 rounds from its 40 millimeter heavy machine gun. The howitzer's explosions echoed through the streets of Baghdad, one after the other in rapid succession. For months, such echoes have signaled an attack by Iraqi insurgents on American forces, but not this time.
Troops from the 82nd Airborne Division and the First Armored Division sealed off the area around the warehouse, in the Sadiya neighborhood, and were sweeping the building, officials said.
Later in the evening, an Apache attack helicopter disabled the Iraqi Hvan. Capt. Gercken, the spokesman for the First Armored Division, said American soldiers, suspecting the van contained a mortar, had tried to stop it near the area known as Abu Garhib, just west of Baghdad. It raced off, managing to elude the much heavier Humvees, gaining such a lead, officials said, that it stopped several times. The American soldiers called in the Apache.
It was unclear what the Apache had fired at the van, Captain Gercken said, but the van was stopped in its tracks. Inside, there were two dead Iraqis and three wounded. Five others were taken prisoner. No mortar or ammunition were found inside the van, officials said, but soldiers did find an 82-millimeter mortar near the place where the van had stopped during the chase.
American officers, including General Sanchez, have complained of the failure so far to secure such intelligence. Wednesday evening, Captain Gercken suggested that that was changing. American commanders, he said, had been deluged in recent days by Iraqis coming forward with information about the insurgents.
"Ordinary Iraqis are coming in off the streets," Captain Gercken said.
Still, the hazards of the new American strategy seemed clear enough. By early Thursday, officers said they had not found weapons inside the van.
In Falluja, soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division killed six people and wounded four in an attack on the Jordanian Hospital, according to a statement released here. According to the statement, the soldiers with the 82nd came under attack and returned fire.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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