|
Us planes pound saddams hometown { November 8 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=400647§ion=newshttp://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=400647§ion=news
U.S. planes pound Saddam's hometown
Sat 8 November, 2003 11:56
By Sasa Kavic
TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes and armoured vehicles have battered suspected guerrilla hideouts in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit after six soldiers were killed in the shooting down of a Black Hawk helicopter.
In a new attack by insurgents in the volatile town of Falluja, west of Baghdad, two soldiers were killed and one wounded when a roadside bomb was detonated near their convoy.
Since Washington declared major combat over on May 1, at least 149 U.S. soldiers have been killed in action in Iraq, including the six killed in Friday's downing of the Black Hawk.
Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Russell of the 4th Infantry Division based in Tikrit, 110 miles north of Baghdad, confirmed the Black Hawk had been brought down by guerrillas.
"We do believe it was brought down by ground fire," he said.
Soldiers said the Black Hawk was probably hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. It was the third U.S. helicopter to be shot down in Iraq in the last two weeks. Last Sunday a Chinook was downed west of Baghdad, killing 16 soldiers.
The U.S. response was swift.
After dark on Friday, F-16 fighter planes swooped over Tikrit, dropping several 500-pound bombs near the helicopter crash site. Then raids were launched around the town -- a hotbed of anti-U.S. resistance.
Troops backed by Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles destroyed several abandoned houses which the U.S. military believed had been used by insurgents.
"We are targeting those areas where we have had attacks on coalition forces," Russell said.
"We want to eliminate those threats."
OPERATION IVY CYCLONE
A U.S. Army statement said the raids were part of "Operation Ivy Cyclone", a new drive to root out guerrillas in the hostile territory around Tikrit. It said 16 people had been detained in the past 24 hours as part of the operation, and five killed.
Three were shot dead after U.S. troops moved in on a position where Iraqis had been firing rockets, one was killed in a gun battle near the town of Balad, and one Iraqi was also killed after he fired on troops who caught him trying to string a decapitation wire across a road, the Army said.
"This operation is a concentrated, uncompromising effort to locate and detain or eliminate any person...that seeks to harm coalition forces or innocent Iraqis as they work together to bring stability and security to a free Iraq," it said.
The U.S. military said it had seized a large cache of mortars and rocket-propelled grenades hidden in a tomb in Samarra, which lies between Baghdad and Tikrit.
In separate raid, five suspected guerrillas, including a former lieutenant-colonel in Saddam's Republican Guard, were captured on Thursday in Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, and a large weapons cache was seized near Falluja, the Army said.
RED CROSS CLOSES OFFICES
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had decided temporarily to shut its offices in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra due to security concerns.
"We are still discussing what to do with our foreign staff. The situation is extremely dangerous and volatile," ICRC spokesman Florian Westphal said.
On October 27, suicide car bombers attacked the ICRC and three police stations in Baghdad, killing at least 35 people.
Following the August truck bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and a string of other attacks on foreign targets, many international organisations have left Iraq.
In another blow to U.S. efforts to get more countries to share the burden of policing Iraq, Turkey confirmed it had reversed a decision to send thousands of troops to the country.
Turkey's parliament voted last month to approve the deployment, but the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council strongly objected. Turkey is a former imperial power in Iraq and has uneasy relations with the country's Kurds.
"Obviously, we would have preferred if this (had) all worked out very nicely to everybody's satisfaction but let's remember that the goal is stability in Iraq," U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
"There is recognition, I think, on all our parts -- the United States' side, Turkish as well as the Iraqis -- that maybe this deployment at this time would not add to that goal in the way that we had hoped it would."
Iraq's interim Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari -- a Kurd -- welcomed the Turkish decision.
"I think the Iraqi people, all of them, would welcome Turkey's decision as wise and rational," he told Reuters.
|
|
