|
Sunni shiite resistance spreading across iraq Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8383037.htmhttp://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8383037.htm
Posted on Thu, Apr. 08, 2004
Sunni, Shiite resistance spreading across Iraq
COMBAT: U.S. MISSILE IS FIRED AT INSURGENTS ATTACKING FROM AL-FALLUJAH MOSQUE; MARINE, TWO ARMY SOLDIERS DIE
By Christine Hauser
New York Times
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The violent Iraqi uprising against the U.S. occupation grew more pitched Wednesday and spread to new parts of the country, with U.S. forces increasing their efforts to put down Sunni and Shiite combatants.
Pentagon officials in Washington signaled that they would probably delay bringing home about 25,000 soldiers as scheduled and would probably move reinforcements to the south.
``We're facing a test of will, and we will meet that test,'' Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, adding that the plan to postpone the return home was part of a strategy ``to systematically address the situations we are facing.''
In Al-Fallujah in the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad, where the most intensive combat occurred, hospital officials said several dozen people were killed after Americans rocketed a mosque compound. U.S. officials said firing had come from the mosque, forcing them to retaliate. The mosque itself remained largely intact.
In the south, where the majority Shiites predominate, followers of a rebel cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, took over several towns, including Al-Kut, where Ukrainian troops had withdrawn under pressure. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry in Kiev reported the pullout, which effectively ceded control of the city to Sadr's supporters.
The resistance even spread to the north of the country, the region most sympathetic to the Americans. In Hawija, near the traditionally Kurdish city of Kirkuk, U.S. troops fired on a crowd protesting the attacks in Al-Fallujah. About eight Iraqis were reported killed.
Bush in consultations
In Crawford, Texas, President Bush spent the day at his ranch, consulting with military commanders and his national security team and speaking by phone with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is to visit Washington next week.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan blamed the unrest on ``a relatively small number of extremist elements'' and said the fighting did not amount to a return to ``major combat'' in Iraq.
Although Baghdad's Sadr City slum, the site of bloody clashes earlier in the week, was largely calm, violence erupted in other parts of the capital. Shortly after nightfall, gunmen opened fire on a U.S. base in Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Al-Kazimiyah and on another in the Sunni neighborhood of Ad-Hamiya.
One Marine was killed in Wednesday's fighting and six were wounded by rifle and grenade fire, military officials said. Eighteen Marines have died since Monday in fighting to the west of Baghdad, including at least 12 in an attack Tuesday in the vicinity of the provincial governor's office in Ar-Ramadi.
The military Wednesday announced the deaths of two more U.S. soldiers. One soldier with the Army's 1st Infantry Division was killed Tuesday in Balad, a town north of Baghdad that is home to a large U.S. air base. The other soldier, assigned to a task force commanded by the Army's 1st Armored Division, died Wednesday in Baghdad after his convoy was struck with a rocket-propelled grenade near the Diyala police station.
Since Sunday, fighting across Iraq has claimed the lives of 34 Americans, two additional coalition soldiers and more than 190 Iraqis. In the nearly 13 months since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, 635 U.S. service personnel have died, 444 of them as a result of hostile action.
Sadr said Iraq would become ``another Vietnam'' for the United States.
``I call upon the American people to stand beside their brethren, the Iraqi people, who are suffering an injustice by your rulers and the occupying army,'' he said in a statement issued from his office in the southern city of An-Najaf. ``Otherwise, Iraq will be another Vietnam for America and the occupiers.''
The spread of fighting is sapping efforts to lay the foundations for a largely ceremonial transfer of political sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30.
An official in the occupying coalition authority, who declined to be named, said Wednesday that coalition and Iraqi security forces had lost control of the key southern cities of An-Najaf and Al-Kufah to the Shiite militia, conceding that months of effort to win over the population with civil infrastructure projects and promises of jobs had failed to foster loyalty among some Iraqis.
``Six months of work is completely gone,'' the official said. ``There is nothing to show for it,'' he said, citing reports that government buildings, police stations, civil defense garrisons, women's centers and other installations built up by the Americans have been overrun and then stripped bare of everything, including files, furnishings and even toilet fixtures.
For the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago, the United States found itself fighting intensely on two population fronts, using warplanes, attack helicopters and armored units against the groups Washington had said it came to liberate when it launched the war in March last year.
In a further indication of widening opposition to the coalition's presence, Bulgaria has asked the United States to send troops to reinforce its 450-strong battalion in Karbala.
In Al-Fallujah, the Marines said they waged a six-hour battle around the Abdel-Aziz al-Samarra mosque before calling in a Cobra helicopter that fired the missile. An F-16 dropped the laser-guided bomb, Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director for operations in Baghdad, said the Marines did not attack the mosque until it became clear that enemy fighters were inside and using it to cover their attacks.
Geneva Convention
He told CNN that under the Geneva Convention, the mosque is protected but that once attacks originated from it, its protected status was moot.
The most probable explanation for the eruptions of violence, many Iraqis believe, is that Sunnis and Shiites are each watching the others' assaults, first in Al-Fallujah last week and then in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, Al-Kufah, An-Najaf and at least three other southern cities over the weekend, sensing the U.S. military forces were overstretched.
This week, U.S. and Iraqi security forces encircled Al-Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad, and Tuesday began to push inward in search of rebels and suspects connected to the killing of four U.S. private security guards last week.
Much of the Iraqi anger among the Shiites has been fanned by what many here see as a heavy-handed crackdown by U.S. occupation forces on Sadr, with the closing of his mouthpiece newspaper last week and the announcement of an arrest warrant in connection with his alleged role in a cleric's slaying last year.
While there is determination to fight the Shiite militia, coalition officials are struggling over what to do in the south and in Shiite cities like Al-Kufah and An-Najaf, where they or the Iraqi security forces they back have effectively lost control.
``We will attack to destroy the Mahdi Army,'' Kimmitt said in a news briefing Wednesday, referring to Sadr's forces. ``Those offensive operations will be deliberate, they will be precise, and they will be powerful, and they will succeed.''
But he said An-Najaf, where Sadr is based and protected by the Mahdi Army, ``is one of those cities that we do have some concern about.''
U.S. officials have to balance their security aims without appearing to interfere with a Shiite pilgrimage holiday called Arbaeen, which starts Friday, when millions of Shiites pray at shrines in An-Najaf and Karbala.
``We are weighing our options, thinking very carefully about the way to restore order to Najaf,'' said Kimmitt. ``But at the same time, doing it in such a manner that does not alienate the pilgrims who are celebrating one of the most important observances of the Muslim calendar.''
The Ukrainian ministry said fighting between its troops and militia fighters that led to its retreat had lasted about 24 hours and killed several dozen Iraqis and one Ukrainian soldier, the first combat death among Ukrainian troops. Ukraine has about 1,650 soldiers in Iraq that are part of a 9,000-strong Polish-led force deployed south of Baghdad.
One of Iraq's most influential religious figures, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, called in a statement for a peaceful solution to the violence, saying force would lead only to an escalation in instability and bloodshed.
|
|
