April 26, 2004

New Battle in Falluja Casts Doubt on Peace Deal

Falluja
U.S. Marines skirmished with Iraqi guerrillas in the besieged town of Falluja on Monday, reinforcing local skepticism about a deal to end three weeks of bloodshed that is due to put American troops on the streets.

The agreement struck on Sunday between U.S. officials and negotiators from the Sunni Muslim city aims to put joint patrols of Marines and Iraqi police into Falluja on Tuesday.

But the insurgents, by U.S. estimates up to 2,000 of them, are showing no signs of complying with an earlier deal to give up heavy weapons and residents said they were not optimistic.

"The joint patrols will have to be conducted peacefully and without provoking residents with things like house searches," said Mohammad Ali. "I doubt very much that they will succeed."

Local witnesses said Monday's battle, in which guerrillas fired rocket-propelled grenades and Marines opened up with heavy machineguns mounted on vehicles, was triggered when U.S. forces probed into northern districts of the town late in the morning.

An hour into the fighting, U.S. helicopters attacked.
[Woohoo!]

Even before the latest clash, local people had little faith that Sunday's deal would do more than extend a scarcely observed cease-fire and would expose the patrols to the guns of the fighters, who, the Americans say, may include 200 foreigners.
[Betcha this figure proves to be very low.--Jen]

"I expect the U.S. and Iraqi forces to be exposed targets for the resistance. No one can control the feelings of the sons of Falluja because they are very angry," said Abdul Hakim Shaker, another resident of the city of 300,000 west of Baghdad.

"They will refuse to put up with American tanks and armored vehicles on their streets," he said in a city where doctors say 600 people were killed in a crackdown this month following the murder and mutilation of four U.S. contractors.

Baghdad
In central Baghdad, an explosion ripped through a chemical storehouse, setting four U.S. military vehicles ablaze and inflicting American and Iraqi casualties, witnesses said.
[The AP report says that the enemy levelled a "weapons repair shop."]

One witness said the blast happened after 12 U.S. soldiers parked their Humvees outside and surrounded the building.

"When they tried to force their way in, there was a huge ball of fire and I was thrown to the ground," Imad Hashim, who said he was about 100 yards away, told Reuters.

The blast was heard in many areas of the capital and a large cloud of black smoke billowed over the area.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military.

Falluja is one of two delicate problems facing the U.S.-led coalition, a Sunni town in a country where 60 percent are Shi'ite Muslims and deep in the heartland of support for toppled leader Saddam Hussein, himself a Sunni.

The other is in the holy Shi'ite cities of Najaf -- where anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is holed up with his militia and where U.S. spokesmen say a "potentially explosive" situation is brewing -- and Kerbala further south.

The convoy of Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov came under fire late on Sunday as he made a surprise visit to Bulgarian troops in Kerbala, Defense Ministry spokeswoman Rumiana Strugarova said. No one was hurt and Parvanov returned home early on Monday, she said in Sofia.

There was better news for Iraq's rulers when oil exports resumed from the main terminal off the southern city of Basra, 27 hours after suicide boat attacks forced operations to halt.
[Terrific news! This was supposedly going to cost $28 million a day in downtime!]

"Iraqi teams restored operations at 1700 GMT on Sunday. The damage was limited and exports are flowing back at the same rates," Oil Minister Mohammad Bahr al-Uloum told Reuters.

The terminal accounts for around 85 percent of Iraq's 1.9 million barrels per day of exports and a successful attack would have caused a major disaster.

Najaf
But tension rose again in Najaf, home of the holiest Shi'ite shrines and effectively controlled by Sadr and his Mehdi Army
[Lest you forget: This is Al-Reuters doing the reporting!]
with U.S. troops poised outside charged with killing or capturing him.

Actually, according to this AP Report, 200 U.S. troops have actually moved into Najaf to replace the withdrawing Spanish Brigade:

But the move deploys U.S. troops within the Najaf urban area for the first time since they first moved against the Al-Mahdi Army militia of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

About 200 troops and Military Police rolled into the base Monday morning. The base is about three miles from Shiite shrines at the heart of Najaf.

Spanish troops are preparing to leave, and U.S. troops moved in to prevent the site from falling into the militia's hands.

Overnight, al-Sadr's forces shelled the base with 21 mortars, wounding at least one Salvadoran soldier, said Col. Paul White, commander of the U.S. 2nd Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment, which moved into the city.

All that shelling with mortar fire sounds like a real battle to me and reason enough to enter into the city, "holy" or not!
But back to the Al-Reuters account:

"Weapons and explosives are being hidden in schools, mosques and holy sites" in the city, U.S. Governor Paul Bremer told Arabic television station Al Jazeera on Sunday.
[Yea Jerry Bremer! Speaking truth to power about the Religion of Peace™ on Al-Jizz, no less!]

Bremer, whose spokesman termed the situation "potentially explosive," said Sadr's militia in Najaf and Kerbala made the situation "very difficult because these two cities are holy."

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said any U.S. move into the city -- which would inflame Shi'ites -- was not imminent: "There are no time lines in the near term" for such action, he said.

Some military experts say the U.S.-led forces are becoming stretched with Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic due to withdraw troops
[Yellow-bellied cowards, all!]
from Iraq and others looking at pulling out after a planned U.S. handover of power to Iraqis on June 30.

El Salvador President Francisco Flores said he had yet to decide whether to keep 380 troops in Iraq after June 30.

Other allies, however, may send more troops. Britain said on Monday it was talking to its coalition partners about how to cope with the withdrawal of Spanish troops, a move that may lead to an expansion of the British contingent, the second biggest.

Formerly Soviet Georgia, which is keen to strengthen warm ties with Washington, said it would nearly quadruple its contingent from 150 men to a full battalion of about 550.

Thank you, Great Britain and Georgia!
We know the British are the best, but maybe the Georgians know only too well that someday soon we may be coming to their country to clean the IslamoNazis out of the Pankisi Gorge (Al Queda's home-away-from-home to wage jihad in Chechnya)...and they remember Communist domination vividly, also.
As for the bad guys in Iraq, it sounds from these incidents that they're just waiting for our soldiers to show up in Najaf, Baghdad and Falluja.
Stay cool, calm and collected, guys and gals!
Happy hunting, but watch your back and come home soon safe, sound and VICTORIOUS.