BAGHDAD, 15 February 2004 — Guerrillas shouting “God is great” launched a bold daylight assault yesterday on an Iraqi police station and a security compound in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, meeting little resistance as they gunned down policemen and freed prisoners in a battle that killed 27 people, most of them policemen.
At least 37 people, all but six of them policemen, were wounded in the assault, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Interior in Baghdad. The same security compound was attacked two days earlier by gunmen just as the top US commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, was visiting the site in Fallujah. Abizaid escaped that attack unharmed.
One shop owner across the street from the compound said he and his neighbors had been told by guerrillas not to open yesterday morning because an attack was imminent.
Around 25 attackers, some masked, surrounded the police station and stormed the building, going from room to room and throwing hand grenades, survivors said. The few policemen present at the time had only small weapons. “I only had a pistol with me,” said Kamel Allawi, a police lieutenant. “Right away I fell on the ground and blood was gushing out of my left leg.”
At the same time, another group of attackers, shouting “God is great”, opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns on the nearby, heavily protected compound of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.
Iraqi security forces, firing from the concrete and sand barricades in front of the compound, battled the attackers for a half-hour in the streets.
Lt. Gen. Ahmed Kadhum Ibrahim told reporters in Baghdad that 32 policemen, two Iraqi civilians and four attackers were killed in the gunbattle. Fallujah police Lt. Col. Jalal Sabri said two of the dead attackers carried Lebanese passports. The remaining attackers escaped after freeing 75 prisoners.
A defense corps officer, Daeed Hamed, said he believed the attackers wanted to free three suspected insurgents — two Kuwaitis and a Lebanese — captured by the corps this week and handed over to the police. He said the three were in the jail at the time of the attack. But Sabri said there were no guerrilla suspects among the prisoners, insisting all were criminals jailed for murder, theft or other crimes. Hamed called the attack “well organized,” saying some gunmen pinned down the defense corps forces while others stormed the nearby police station where the prisoners were freed.
The brazen raid — on the heels of the Abizaid attack — raised questions about the preparedness of some Iraqi police and defense units to take on security duties as the US administration wants.
The US-led coalition intends to hand sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30 and rely more on Iraqi forces to fight the persistent insurgency, blamed on backers of Saddam Hussein and foreign militants.
Also yesterday, demonstrations broke out in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah and the Baghdad suburb of Abu Gharib, where hundreds of angry Iraqis demonstrated against US military raids and searches of their homes. Protesters gathered near a giant American-run prison and demanded the release of thousands of Iraqi prisoners.
In Sulaimaniyah, thousands of protesters clamored for an independent Kurdish state that includes the three autonomous Kurdish provinces as well as disputed parts of northern Iraq containing a large Arab population.
— Additional input from agencies
