BAGHDAD, 7 November 2005 — US and Iraqi forces battled insurgents yesterday in a town near the border with Syria as part of a military sweep aimed at preventing foreign fighters from entering the country.
The goal of Operation Steel Curtain, launched early Saturday, “is to restore security along the Iraqi-Syrian border and destroy the Al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorist network operating throughout this area,” Brig. Gen. Donald Alston told reporters yesterday.
As they entered Husayba, US and Iraqi forces have encountered “sporadic resistance” from insurgents, mainly improvised explosives and gunfire, said Alston, a spokesman for US-led coalition forces in Iraq.
“We are not meeting what I would term stiff resistance,” Alston said. He cautioned however that the operation “has just begun.” At least nine airstrikes were called in on strong points in Husayba as well a strike on a suspected car bomb. The US military is keeping a tight lid on information from the region.
The operation, involving 1,000 Iraqi soldiers as well as 2,500 US marines, sailors and soldiers, is one of the biggest joint military operations in the vast restive Sunni Arab province of Al-Anbar.
Meanwhile in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, a first group of Sunni Arabs were released from prison as part of a program aimed at lessening tension in the multiethnic city. Eighty Sunni detainees are to be set free over the next three days. A local official, Khodr Hassan, said the move was an initiative taken by Kurdish President Jalal Talabani “with the goal of opening a new page in relations between Arabs and Kurds and to create a peaceful climate” for the Dec. 15 general elections.
Insurgents continued their campaign of violence around the country, killing nine Iraqis, including three in a car bombing in the west Baghdad district of Yarmuk. Three truck drivers delivering building supplies to US forces were killed in an ambush near Balad, the Iraqi army said, while two police officer were shot dead in attacks in Baiji and in Baquba, all north of the capital. A bomb blast targeting a US convoy killed an Iraqi civilian west of Kirkuk. The US military reported no casualties in the attack.
Separately Japan agreed to write off 80 percent of Iraq’s $7.3-billion debt to Tokyo in three phases, with the rest to be repaid over 23 years.
