FALLUJA, Iraq, 16 June 2003 — US forces sealed off roads, searched houses and scoured the skies with helicopters in the restive towns around Baghdad yesterday in a hunt for diehard Saddam Hussein loyalists blamed for recent attacks. US Army spokesman Sgt. Brian Thomas said the new mission, Operation Desert Scorpion, would root out Saddam supporters who have staged deadly ambushes on US troops.
“We are trying to detain people who want to destabilize Iraq,” he said, adding that the mission would focus on Baghdad and the tense areas to the north and west of the capital.
The operation aims to win hearts and minds as well as hunt guerrillas — a Central Command statement said it was “designed to identify and defeat selected Baath party loyalists, terrorist organizations and criminal elements while delivering humanitarian aid simultaneously”.
In the Sunni town of Falluja, 70 km (45 miles) west of Baghdad, troops searched some houses overnight, but by morning they were distributing food and supplies. Hostility to the Americans is widespread in Falluja after a series of clashes, but the town was quiet yesterday with a low-key army presence.
Some 40 US soldiers have been killed by hostile action since the United States declared major combat over on May 1.
The attacks have been concentrated in Baghdad and two nearby areas — to the west around Ramadi and Falluja, and to the north around Balad, Baquba and Tikrit, Saddam’s home town.
The United States says remnants of Saddam’s regime are behind the attacks. Many locals say they have no love for Saddam but that anger is mounting toward US soldiers.
“We were oppressed under Saddam and now we are oppressed under the Americans,” a trader in Falluja said.
US Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a television interview that Saddam was probably still alive and several groups were behind recent attacks. “I think, probably the majority opinion is that he is alive and it’s something that has to be dealt with,” Myers told the US Fox News Channel on Saturday.
US forces last week mounted their biggest operation in Iraq in the past six weeks. Called Operation Peninsula Strike, it involved a series of raids on suspected guerrilla hideouts in the fertile plains of the Tigris river near Balad.
In a statement, the US military said some 400 Iraqis were detained in the sweep and about 60 were still in custody. Four US soldiers were wounded, along with two Iraqi “hostile civilians”. Two former Iraqi generals turned themselves in.
Central Command also said on Friday US forces had captured the commander of the former Iraqi air force, Hamid Raja Shalah Al-Tikriti, but did not reveal where he was caught. He was No. 17 on a US list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis.
A US military statement on Friday said 27 Iraqis were killed near Balad after they ambushed an American tank patrol, but after doubt was cast on the report a US spokesman declined to confirm the death toll.
Locals say US troops killed five civilians in the area on Thursday. The Washington Post quoted Lt. Col. Andy Fowler, commander of the unit that was ambushed, as saying that seven Iraqis were killed in the incident, not 27.
Yesterday marked the end of a two-week amnesty for Iraqis to hand in heavy weapons without punishment. Iraqis caught with banned weapons without a permit will now face a fine and a jail term of up to a year.
Many Iraqis have complained that they dare not give up their guns until security is restored following the anarchy that ensued after Saddam’s overthrow on April 9. The US army said that during the amnesty Iraqis handed in 123 pistols, 76 semi-automatic rifles, 435 automatic rifles, 46 machineguns, 11 anti-aircraft weapons and 381 grenades and bombs — a drop in Iraq’s ocean of weaponry.
In Washington, lawmakers yesterday wrestled with the awkward failure of US-led forces to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as Congress began reviewing the intelligence used to justify the war that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein’s eldest daughter told Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper she is convinced that her father survived the US-led war which toppled him from power and is still alive.
Raghad Hussein told the London-based weekly she was no longer in touch with the former Iraqi president or her brothers Uday and Qusay, but believed they had all survived. “The last time I spoke to my father was five days before the war,” which was launched on March 20, Raghad said. “He was in good spirits. I know he survived the war.
