BAGHDAD, 7 August 2005 — The US military launched airstrikes yesterday in three Iraqi cities in the Euphrates River Valley, northwest of Baghdad, as part of a continuing operation to hunt down insurgents.
The attacks came as part of Operation Quick Strike in which a 1,000-man joint US-Iraqi force is pursuing suspected insurgents in and around the cities of Haditha, Haqliniyah and Barwaneh along the banks of the Euphrates River.
The body of one civilian killed in the strikes was taken to a hospital in Haditha, said a hospital administrator.
The first day of the operation, Wednesday, saw 14 US soldiers killed in a single explosion.
Meanwhile yesterday in Baghdad insurgents targeted US patrols in two separate bombing incidents.
A suicide car bomber damaged two military vehicles in a suburb to the southeast of the capital. The Ministry of Interior said three civilians were injured in the incident.A bomb blast in Al-Mahmoudiya just to the south of the capital, damaged another vehicle and sparked a fire in a building that housed shops and apartments, said eyewitnesses.
Four US soldiers were injured in the explosion, said a spokesperson for the military.
To the east of the capital in a suburb of Baquba, insurgents killed an Iraqi policeman and injured one of his colleagues when they opened fire on a patrol.
There may be dissent among ranks of Al-Qaeda fighters based in Mosul — if a letter purportedly written by a member of the group to its country head Abu Mosab Al-Zarqawi is anything to go by.
In it, one “Abu Zayd” complained of poor local leadership in the organization and the mistreatment of foreign fighters, in a statement of excerpts from the letter that the US says it discovered July 27 during a raid on a home in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
“This is a clarification of what has become of the situation in Mosul, and it is no secret to you the noticeable decrease in the attacks carried out by the mujahideen from not long ago when Mosul was in the hands of the mujahideen,” wrote Abu Zayd.
The most recent wave of bloody attacks in the city occurred in late June.
Abu Zayd decries the “deplorable” conditions suffered by non-Iraqi fighters including bad pay, housing problems and marginalization within the organization. The statement did not give his nationality.
The tone of the excerpts was markedly different from the expressions of pride and strength of Al-Qaeda in messages that claim responsibility for attacks and appear on web sites used by Islamists.
The authenticity of those messages, and that attributed to Abu Zayd, could not be verified.
The US military also said that 79 suspected terrorists were picked up in raids focused mainly on the capital Thursday and Friday in cooperation with Iraqi security.
