BAGHDAD, 12 December 2004 — Insurgents used the hospital in the volatile city of Ramadi to ambush US soldiers, the military said yesterday, firing rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire at troops. Two Iraqi civilians, including a judge, were killed.
Officials for the Ramadi General Hospital and Medical College rejected the claims but said fighting occurred near the hospital Friday night.
The ambush happened late Friday as US soldiers attached to the Marines were patrolling in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad and close to the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, said Capt. Bradley Gordon, spokesman for the 1st Marine Division of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
Insurgents hid inside the Ramadi General Hospital and Medical College and in nearby areas waiting for the soldiers to move into their ambush zone, Gordon said.
“The insurgents turned off all of the lights in and around the hospital as the soldiers approached,” he said in a statement. “Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire from both sides of the road at the soldiers as soon as the lights of the hospital were turned back on.
“Some of the muzzle flashes of insurgent firing positions were observed as originating from windows within the hospital.”
Gordon said US forces fought through the ambush, suffering no casualties.
A hospital official, Dr. Ala’a Al-Ani, said an Iraqi civilian in the vicinity of the clashes was killed by gunfire, but it was not immediately clear who shot him.
A second Iraqi, judge Omar Abdul Aziz Rashid, also was killed during fighting as he was returning home, according to his wife, Dr. Eman Abdul Qadre. “ It was very hard to identify my husband’s body, because it was charred inside the car,” she said.
Another hospital official, who was working at the time of the clashes, rejected the US claims that insurgents used the hospital to ambush American troops.
“No armed men entered the hospital yesterday and the hospital was not used to attack anybody,” As’ad Ali said. “There were clashes but they took place near the hospital.”
Tikrit Police Chief Killed,
Clashes in Fallujah
Gunmen assassinated the chief of operations of Salah El-Din police station in Tikrit yesterday, while continuing clashes were reported from Fallujah.
“Gunmen ambushed Col. Naguib Al-Ayyash at Al-Sharqat crossroads 100 kilometers north of Tikrit while he was heading to work,” Mahmoud Al-Jobouri told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
He said the colonel’s car came under heavy fire, and the gunmen then fled. Two other men at the car were seriously wounded.
In another insurgency hotbed, clashes continued in Fallujah with a number of insurgents believed to have entered the city west of Baghdad during recent days, witnesses told DPA.
Military operations had continued in the Al-Julan area northwest of the city while US tanks shelled southern areas. A DPA correspondent in Fallujah said there were reports of a number of more gunmen arriving to the city in the last four days.
Meanwhile, a US soldier was sentenced to three years in prison for killing a severely wounded Iraqi teenager, the US military said yesterday.
Staff Sgt. Johnny M. Horne Jr., 30, of Wilson, N.C., pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of unpremeditated murder and one count of soliciting another soldier to commit unpremeditated murder.
His sentencing included a reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of wages and a dishonorable discharge.
