BAGHDAD, 16 October 2004 — US forces yesterday arrested Fallujah’s chief negotiator as the military said it was investigating reports several members of a US reservist supply unit refused to go on a convoy mission.
A Fallujah hospital doctor, Thamim Al-Nuaimi, said five civilians had been killed and 11 wounded in Thursday night’s raids.
Fallujah police, who do not answer to the US-backed interim government, said US Marines detained Sunni cleric Khaled Al-Jumaili, the city’s police chief and two other police officers while they were moving their families to a nearby resort town for safety from American air raids.
There was no immediate comment from US officials on the arrest of Jumaili, who had been leading a Fallujah delegation in peace talks with the government that broke down this week.
Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi threatened Wednesday to attack Fallujah unless its people handed over militants loyal to Jordanian Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, said to be holed up there. Zarqawi, America’s deadliest enemy in Iraq, has a $25 million US bounty on his head. His group claimed Thursday’s twin suicide bombings that killed 10 Iraqis and four American private security workers in Baghdad’s Green Zone.
Fierce airstrikes hit Fallujah after the blasts as US and Iraqi forces intensified pressure on suspected Zarqawi targets in and around the bastion of insurgency west of Baghdad. But the military denied the bombing campaign was a prelude to a full-scale assault to wrest Fallujah from rebel hands.
“This is part of ongoing operations in Fallujah. It is not the beginning of a major offensive,” a US spokeswoman said.
The US military said the army was investigating reports that some soldiers refused to go on a convoy mission. Relatives of the soldiers said the troops considered the mission too dangerous.
The reservists are from the 343rd Quartermaster Company, which is based in Rock Hill, S.C. The unit delivers food and water in combat zones.
According to The Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson, Miss., a platoon of 17 soldiers refused to go on a fuel supply mission Wednesday because their vehicles were in poor shape and they did not have a capable armed escort.
The paper cited interviews with family members of some of the soldiers, who said the soldiers had been confined after their refusals. The mission was carried out by other soldiers from the 343rd, which has at least 120 soldiers, the military said.
Convoys in Iraq are frequently subject to ambushes and roadside bombings.
A whole unit refusing to go on a mission in a war zone would be a significant breach of military discipline. A statement from the military’s press center in Baghdad called the incident “isolated.”
“The investigating team is currently in Tallil taking statements and interviewing those involved. This is an isolated incident and it is far too early in the investigation to speculate as to what happened, why it happened or any action that might be taken,” the coalition press information center said in the statement.
A British security guard was the latest victim of the insurgency that has targeted foreign contractors here. The ArmorGroup employee died of gunshot wounds suffered during an incident in Taza, south of Kirkuk, on Oct. 11, the security company that employed him said yesterday in a statement. “Investigation into the cause of the incident is ongoing and we will comment further once that investigation has been completed,” it said.
Meanwhile, the weapons buyback program for Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia has been extended by two days, Iraqi National Security Advisor Kassem Daoud said, hours before the initiative was due to expire.
“It’s been extended two days with no conditions,” Daoud said. “We’re looking for heavy weapons.”
He added that land mines and bombs planted in the streets of Sadr City needed to be dug up. “This is preventing the process of reconstruction.” Daoud added that similar buyback programs would soon begin across the country as the government sought to get weapons off the street in a nation that is armed to the teeth.
— Additional input from agencies
