BAGHDAD, 5 October 2005 — US Marines yesterday launched their biggest offensive this year against Al-Qaeda guerrillas in western Iraq, the military saying 2,500 troops attacked militants around Haditha.
Two months after the last push against rebel fighters ended with Al-Qaeda still in control, to the dismay of locals alarmed by its Taleban-style rule over civilians, Operation River Gate aims to stop the group operating in Haditha and two nearby towns, Haqlaniya and Barwana, a military statement said.
As America threw its military might against the insurgents, the United Nations spoke up for Sunni politicians in urging the Shiite-led Parliament to alter a ruling that angered the minority by raising the hurdle to their, probably vain, bid to vote down a new constitution at next week’s referendum.
Describing it as “moving the goalposts at the end of the game,” a UN official told Reuters he expected Parliament to meet today to reverse a decision that had raised the prospect of a new Sunni boycott of the electoral process.
That would be a major setback to US efforts to draw the once dominant minority into Iraq’s post-Saddam Hussein politics.
The Haditha attack, at the start of the holy month of Ramadan and 10 days before Iraqis vote in a constitutional referendum, will also free local people from the “terrorists’ campaign of murder and intimidation,” the US military said.
In the Sunni west of Iraq there is widespread discontent with the US backed, Shiite-led government and with the charter that should be ratified in next week’s vote. But locals also voice fear and anger at foreign-inspired extremists who have set up Taleban-style religious rule in Haditha and other towns.
“The operation started with bombing in the city and there was fighting overnight,” one Haditha resident said by telephone, adding that a bridge linking Haditha and Berwana was destroyed.
The US military said an F-16 jet bombed the bridge.
“It’s quiet now but they are going through the city arresting people. There is a curfew and snipers are posted on rooftops,” the Haditha resident added; jets and helicopters were also on patrol.
In Baghdad, two Iraqi soldiers and a civilian were killed and six security men wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded after entering the heavily fortified government zone.
South of Baghdad, near Yusufiya, Iraqi and US forces fought a battle with guerrillas in broad daylight, police said. The US military said that “more than three dozen terrorists were ... killed, wounded ... or detained.”
Three US soldiers were killed in bomb attacks near Haqlaniya on Monday, the military said. A fourth, a Marine killed on the Syrian border, took the death toll among American forces in Iraq to at least 1,939 since they invaded in 2003.
