BAGHDAD, September 9, 2004 - At least 57 people were killed when US-led forces spearheaded overnight assaults on Iraq’s northern trouble spot of Tall Afar and the notorious insurgent bastion of Fallujah, officials said on Thursday.
US warplanes hammered Tall Afar from night until afternoon as ground clashes dragged on for 12 hours between coalition forces and insurgents, in an area the US military charges is infested with fighters infiltrating from Syria.
A health official said at least 45 people were killed and 80 wounded from the bombing alone — the second US-led raid on the town in five days.. However the US army reported up to 57 killed.
Many bodies strewn in the streets could not be collected and Doctor Rabih Yassin accused US troops and the Iraqi national guard of turning back ambulances carrying medical supplies. The US military said a "large terrorist element" has "displaced local Iraqi security forces" in the area.
In Fallujah, jets pounded the city in a relentless series of night-time raids, killing 12 Iraqis, including five children and two women, a doctor said. Nine others were wounded. At one house flattened by a US missile, a correspondent saw locals drag five bodies out of the rubble and children help retrieve pieces of flesh.
Witnesses said the family who lived in the house was sleeping on the roof when the missile struck, blowing their bodies to smithereens. The Marine Corps said the latest raid was a "precision strike" on a hideout used by militants loyal to Iraq’s most wanted man, alleged Al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has a 25-million-dollar price on his head. "Three Zarqawi associates were reported to be in the area, no other individuals were present at the time of the strike," a statement said.
An Internet statement purportedly from Zarqawi said four of his fighters were killed in two days of US strikes on Fallujah.
The statement, dated Wednesday and posted on an Islamist Web site on Thursday, said the "mujahideen" had destroyed two US military vehicles in Tuesday night’s attack on the rebel-held town. "Four of the mujahideen were martyred in the ... random US bombardment of Fallujah on Tuesday," said the statement, which could not be authenticated. "This strike will not go without a strong response."
US-led Iraqi forces patrolled the Sunni Muslim bastion of Samarra on Thursday for the first time since June, after weeks of peace talks with local leaders, the US military and a correspondent said.
By 10:45 am (0645 GMT), five US tanks and a number of armoured vehicles were parked outside the council building in the city north of Baghdad, as US planes monitored the situation from the sky.
The US military said agreement for their return was reached after weeks of discussions with provincial and city leaders.
US warplanes detonated roadside bombs Thursday in a sprawling Shia slum in eastern Baghdad, a US military official said.
At least one person was killed and four injured in the strikes, officials at al-Sadr General Hospital said.
On the hostage crisis, Italy’s Margherita Boniver was to head to Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen and Syria to seek help to free charity workers Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, who were seized from their Baghdad office at gunpoint on Tuesday.
Two months from the US presidential election and with the debate over the merits of the war to oust Saddam Hussein showing no reprieve, a top UN weapons inspector challenged one of Washington’s key justifications for war.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_10-9-200
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