De Rode Roos
06-06-03, 02:29
U.S. Soldier Killed, Five Wounded in Iraq
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 5, 2003; 5:54 PM
FALLUJAH, Iraq, June 5 -- Attackers using a rocket-propelled grenade killed a U.S. soldier and wounded five others in a guerrilla-style assault less than a day after U.S. commanders tripled the number of troops trying to pacify this volatile town west of Baghdad.
In the capital, meanwhile, two gunmen wounded a U.S. soldier guarding a bank in the city's busy Adhamiya district.
The attacks brought to eight the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq during the past eight days and brought home the dilemma facing occupation forces as their efforts to provide security in towns and cities make them more visible and more vulnerable to attack.
The risk is especially high in a place like Fallujah, a city of 200,000 where many people are openly hostile to the U.S. occupation. Moving about in convoys in heavy traffic and setting up outposts at busy intersections, the troops make ready targets as they sit atop tanks and armored vehicles.
On Wednesday night, a group of U.S. soldiers decided to bivouac in and around the burned-out shell of the Fallujah police station. At about 1:30 this morning, someone fired automatic weapons behind the station in what residents in nearby homes suggested was a diversion.
Attackers then fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a Bradley Fighting Vehicle parked in front of the station. The blast ripped open a wall, killed one soldier and wounded the other five.
Troops rushed in to evacuate the wounded and clean up the debris. Some surrounded the station, while still others ran down streets to carry out house-to-house searches. They detained at least one person.
Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of occupation forces, has identified Fallujah and a handful of other towns west and northwest of Baghdad as trouble spots where what he described as "remnants" of the Baath Party loyal to deposed president Saddam Hussein have targeted Americans. On Wednesday, 1,500 soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division moved here from Baghdad to reinforce 300 troops with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
Inhabitants of Fallujah contend that U.S. troops provoked their continuing anger in April when they killed a total of 17 people during two protest demonstrations. They also denounce the Americans for invading the privacy of the town's conservative inhabitants, particularly with heavy-handed weapons searches.
"Many people just don't want them in the city," said Mayor Taha Bedeoy Hammed, a dissident during Hussein's rule who is cooperating with U.S. authorities.
Hammed said he has begun to think the assaults on U.S. targets have been coordinated. "There is some kind of organization at work," he said. "I just don't know who or what it is."
When the bulk of U.S. forces in Fallujah left the town after today's attack and headed for camps among palm trees and desert to the west, a crowd gathered at the police station to celebrate. A young man raised a red, white and black Iraqi flag on a wall above a pool of blood.
"This is just the beginning. We want this to happen all over Iraq," said Adel Ahmed. "We are not like the Palestinians. We won't submit easily.
"You should have heard the soldiers," he continued with a smile. "They moaned until dawn."
"They don't respect the Iraqi people," said Naha Abed Rushed, a self-described laborer who also seemed to be the leader of a group of young men who entered the station. "They are invaders and they should not come to town."
Passions were further aroused with the arrival of a man holding a gruesome photograph. It showed the smashed head of a young man who everyone said was run over by a Bradley Fighting Vehicle on Wednesday.
Hammed, the mayor, said that Americans evidently took the victim, Ahmed Mutlib, for an attacker as he rushed toward them on a motorcycle. A Bradley pulled out of an intersection and intercepted him, Hamid said. U.S. officials today said they had no information on the alleged incident.
Some bystanders at the police station said Mutlib's death ignited passions that flared into this morning's grenade attack. "Here, for every Iraqi killed, people absolutely must kill one American," said one man.
Soldiers raided several Fallujah neighborhoods this morning. They ran along dusty roads while Iraqis sat languidly next to walls, trying to shield themselves from the stifling summer heat. A mobile loudspeaker warned in Arabic, "Keep off the streets or you will be killed or wounded. The coalition forces do not want to hurt you. For your own safety, leave the area immediately."
The raiders entered the duplex home of Mohammed Obeid at about 6 a.m., looking for weapons. An armored vehicle battered down a date palm and a garden wall. Someone kicked in a door and shot off a lock on a cabinet in a second floor-storeroom. Obeid said that they found nothing, and only succeeded in spilling rice everywhere while searching through bags of grain.
"They certainly weren't very polite," Obeid said. "They could have just knocked." He and his sons were briefly bound with plastic handcuffs during the raid.
Obeid speculated that the soldiers had mistaken his house for an adjoining home, which they raided moments later. There, Nuriya Mahmoud Ferhan told a reporter that the soldiers bound and took away her husband, Hamiz Aboud.
She attributed the arrest to information provided by enemies in an intra-family squabble. She pointed to bullet holes in the wall and door of the house. "Cousins" shot up the garden on Tuesday, she said; Aboud owes them money and they said pay or leave town, according to Ferhan.
"Then, the next day, the Americans come and say my husband is a Baathist. It's not true. The Americans better be careful whom they listen to. The informers -- they are the Baathists. They belong to Saddam! The Americans should go after them!" she said.
In Baghdad, witnesses described an apparently planned attack that left one American soldier wounded.
One man approached the soldier as he stood guard at a bank, began to converse and then shot him at close range in the neck with a pistol, a security guard at a furniture store said. A second soldier shot and badly wounded the assailant, but a second gunman fired from across the street and then fled in a red sedan.
U.S. forces and Iraqi police cordoned off the neighborhood, and an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter circled overhead as soldiers searched for the car. "It's a shame. The Americans are our friends," said Alwan, the furniture store security guard.
But the store's owner, Ghassan Adnan, a former army captain, said, "People are angry at the Americans."
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 5, 2003; 5:54 PM
FALLUJAH, Iraq, June 5 -- Attackers using a rocket-propelled grenade killed a U.S. soldier and wounded five others in a guerrilla-style assault less than a day after U.S. commanders tripled the number of troops trying to pacify this volatile town west of Baghdad.
In the capital, meanwhile, two gunmen wounded a U.S. soldier guarding a bank in the city's busy Adhamiya district.
The attacks brought to eight the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq during the past eight days and brought home the dilemma facing occupation forces as their efforts to provide security in towns and cities make them more visible and more vulnerable to attack.
The risk is especially high in a place like Fallujah, a city of 200,000 where many people are openly hostile to the U.S. occupation. Moving about in convoys in heavy traffic and setting up outposts at busy intersections, the troops make ready targets as they sit atop tanks and armored vehicles.
On Wednesday night, a group of U.S. soldiers decided to bivouac in and around the burned-out shell of the Fallujah police station. At about 1:30 this morning, someone fired automatic weapons behind the station in what residents in nearby homes suggested was a diversion.
Attackers then fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a Bradley Fighting Vehicle parked in front of the station. The blast ripped open a wall, killed one soldier and wounded the other five.
Troops rushed in to evacuate the wounded and clean up the debris. Some surrounded the station, while still others ran down streets to carry out house-to-house searches. They detained at least one person.
Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of occupation forces, has identified Fallujah and a handful of other towns west and northwest of Baghdad as trouble spots where what he described as "remnants" of the Baath Party loyal to deposed president Saddam Hussein have targeted Americans. On Wednesday, 1,500 soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division moved here from Baghdad to reinforce 300 troops with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
Inhabitants of Fallujah contend that U.S. troops provoked their continuing anger in April when they killed a total of 17 people during two protest demonstrations. They also denounce the Americans for invading the privacy of the town's conservative inhabitants, particularly with heavy-handed weapons searches.
"Many people just don't want them in the city," said Mayor Taha Bedeoy Hammed, a dissident during Hussein's rule who is cooperating with U.S. authorities.
Hammed said he has begun to think the assaults on U.S. targets have been coordinated. "There is some kind of organization at work," he said. "I just don't know who or what it is."
When the bulk of U.S. forces in Fallujah left the town after today's attack and headed for camps among palm trees and desert to the west, a crowd gathered at the police station to celebrate. A young man raised a red, white and black Iraqi flag on a wall above a pool of blood.
"This is just the beginning. We want this to happen all over Iraq," said Adel Ahmed. "We are not like the Palestinians. We won't submit easily.
"You should have heard the soldiers," he continued with a smile. "They moaned until dawn."
"They don't respect the Iraqi people," said Naha Abed Rushed, a self-described laborer who also seemed to be the leader of a group of young men who entered the station. "They are invaders and they should not come to town."
Passions were further aroused with the arrival of a man holding a gruesome photograph. It showed the smashed head of a young man who everyone said was run over by a Bradley Fighting Vehicle on Wednesday.
Hammed, the mayor, said that Americans evidently took the victim, Ahmed Mutlib, for an attacker as he rushed toward them on a motorcycle. A Bradley pulled out of an intersection and intercepted him, Hamid said. U.S. officials today said they had no information on the alleged incident.
Some bystanders at the police station said Mutlib's death ignited passions that flared into this morning's grenade attack. "Here, for every Iraqi killed, people absolutely must kill one American," said one man.
Soldiers raided several Fallujah neighborhoods this morning. They ran along dusty roads while Iraqis sat languidly next to walls, trying to shield themselves from the stifling summer heat. A mobile loudspeaker warned in Arabic, "Keep off the streets or you will be killed or wounded. The coalition forces do not want to hurt you. For your own safety, leave the area immediately."
The raiders entered the duplex home of Mohammed Obeid at about 6 a.m., looking for weapons. An armored vehicle battered down a date palm and a garden wall. Someone kicked in a door and shot off a lock on a cabinet in a second floor-storeroom. Obeid said that they found nothing, and only succeeded in spilling rice everywhere while searching through bags of grain.
"They certainly weren't very polite," Obeid said. "They could have just knocked." He and his sons were briefly bound with plastic handcuffs during the raid.
Obeid speculated that the soldiers had mistaken his house for an adjoining home, which they raided moments later. There, Nuriya Mahmoud Ferhan told a reporter that the soldiers bound and took away her husband, Hamiz Aboud.
She attributed the arrest to information provided by enemies in an intra-family squabble. She pointed to bullet holes in the wall and door of the house. "Cousins" shot up the garden on Tuesday, she said; Aboud owes them money and they said pay or leave town, according to Ferhan.
"Then, the next day, the Americans come and say my husband is a Baathist. It's not true. The Americans better be careful whom they listen to. The informers -- they are the Baathists. They belong to Saddam! The Americans should go after them!" she said.
In Baghdad, witnesses described an apparently planned attack that left one American soldier wounded.
One man approached the soldier as he stood guard at a bank, began to converse and then shot him at close range in the neck with a pistol, a security guard at a furniture store said. A second soldier shot and badly wounded the assailant, but a second gunman fired from across the street and then fled in a red sedan.
U.S. forces and Iraqi police cordoned off the neighborhood, and an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter circled overhead as soldiers searched for the car. "It's a shame. The Americans are our friends," said Alwan, the furniture store security guard.
But the store's owner, Ghassan Adnan, a former army captain, said, "People are angry at the Americans."