Fourteen U.S. soldiers and Marines have been killed in the latest three days of fighting in Iraq, the military announced Thursday, as American forces pressed their new security crackdown on several fronts in what is proving to be a costly and bloody campaign.
The American toll has mounted in the months since President Bush’s “surge” was launched. The strategy has pushed troops into more insecure areas as they attempt to establish firm control in Baghdad and, farther afield, eliminate the threat of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
On Thursday, more than 1,200 U.S. soldiers were pushing south along the Tigris River through a Sunni insurgent haven known as Arab Jubour, part of U.S. strategy to take control of the terrain encircling the capital.
In Baqouba, north of Baghdad, Americans were fighting in city streets to detain insurgents and destroy their bombmaking facilities. In Arab Jubour, to the south of the capital, they were moving amid dense palm groves and along dusty canal roads in a grinding door-to-door search that began Saturday.
“The enemy is very talented out here. There is no doubt he has his game on,” said Lt. Col. Ken Adgie, commander of the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division, whose soldiers are leading the ground effort at Patrol Base Murray. “It’s going to be a long summer.”
More than 2,000 American troops are taking part in this operation, along with about 1,000 Iraqi soldiers.
In past large-scale assaults, U.S. soldiers frequently descended on suspected enemy hideouts only to find that many of the adult males had fled. This time, attack aircraft have dropped explosives on roads to cut off escape routes. They have destroyed at least 17 boats on the Tigris that soldiers suspected were being used to ferry munitions north to Baghdad. Two other brigades operating on the eastern and western flanks of the Marne Torch operation are trying to keep fighters from leaving the area.
“The key is, we’ve got to prevent him from moving, and prevent him from the ability to move into Baghdad to create these spectacular attacks,” said Col. Terry Ferrell, the commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division, the last of the five new combat brigades to arrive as part of Bush’s troop increase. “We’ve got to deny him the ability to go somewhere else.”
Limited U.S. presence
Arab Jubour is almost exclusively Sunni, once home to many prominent members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. For the past year, U.S. soldiers have rarely spent more than a couple of days in the area, commanders said, allowing insurgents to rig a lethal defense of roadside bombs.
As with other parts of the country, the Sunni insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq has conducted a repressive campaign of killing and kidnapping among the roughly 3,000 residents of Arab Jubour. Many people have told commanders they fear cooperating with Americans only to be left to the mercy of Al Qaeda in Iraq when the Americans leave. “They truly are scared to death,” Adgie said.
“No one has ever stayed,” said Ferrell. “We’re going in. We’re going to kill, capture and defeat that threat. But we’re not leaving.”
Throughout the operation, B-1 bombers, F-16 fighter jets and other aircraft have bombed roads and suspected weapons-storage sites. The first night, eight 2,000-pound bombs were dropped, said Capt. Kevin Carrigan, the brigade’s air liaison officer. Screaming jets are flying low across the area in what he called a show of force to intimidate the enemy.
“We took away two weapons caches and we took away their movement,” he said. “We’re now really surging to try to get things in control here, but it’s going to be difficult.”
One measure of the difficulty faced by U.S. forces across the country is the spike in American deaths since Tuesday. In the largest toll in a single incident, five American soldiers were killed Thursday by a roadside bomb that hit their convoy in northeastern Baghdad. Three Iraqi civilians and an interpreter also were killed, the military said.
Hours later, another soldier died when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his vehicle in northern Baghdad, wounding three others, The Associated Press reported.
On Wednesday, a roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers and wounded another in western Baghdad, and two Marines died in fighting in Anbar province.
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Southwest of Baghdad, two soldiers were killed and four were wounded Tuesday when explosions struck near their vehicle, the military said. The latest U.S. deaths raised to at least 3,545 the number of American troops who have died in the war, according to an AP count.
In the push in Arab Jubour, the dangers are apparent and ever present. The soldiers move methodically on foot, searching every house for weapons and attempting to catalog the local population. So far they have destroyed 17 weapons caches, commanders said.
The troops established their headquarters, known as Patrol Base Murray, inside a sprawling riverside estate. While insurgents have fired mortars at the base without causing injuries, a close call occurred at 7:45 p.m. Thursday, when a rocket-propelled grenade crashed down on a dirt berm about 75 yards away from the house.
At the sound of the bang, soldiers sprinted inside and slung on their helmets and flak jackets. Gunners on the roof saw a plume rising up from amid the palm trees north of the estate. 1st Sgt. Robert Tetu jumped on the radio.
‘Why aren’t we shooting?’
“Why aren’t we shooting at that … area if we see a smoke trail?” he barked. “This shouldn’t take so long.”
The guns roared. Up on the roof, Sgt. Lauren Hoeppner, 28, fired off six armor-piercing incendiary rounds into the foliage. Another gunner shot more than 60 bullets out of his M-240 machine gun.
“We’re getting attacked!” someone shouted downstairs.
The grenade landed near a pumping station next to the outpost, where two children were playing. Within minutes, the boy, about 3 years old, was carried to the entrance of the base with a head wound caused by shrapnel. The girl, about 5 years old, was brought in with more serious wounds to her left leg. The soldiers treated the children, who returned home late Thursday night.
“These guys have been doing that ever since we got out here,” Hoeppner said of the attackers.
In other developments, 15 people were killed and 72 were injured when a suicide truck bomber crashed an oil tanker into a local government compound and detonated it in the small town of Sulaiman Bek, about 60 miles south of Kirkuk, local police and hospital officials said. The explosion demolished the offices of the mayor, town council and police, according to regional police Col. Abbas Mohammed Amin. Two police were killed, and 20 police and two council members were wounded, officials said.
Meanwhile, as many as nine mortar shells slammed into Baghdad’s Green Zone on Thursday morning, including one that reportedly landed in the parking lot used by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. There were no reports of injuries.
The heavily fortified Green Zone — a 5-square-mile, walled compound on the banks of the Tigris that is headquarters for the Iraqi government and U.S. forces — has come under increasing attack this year. A United Nations report earlier this month said that more than 86 mortar and rocket attacks had hit the Green Zone from the beginning of March through May 22, and at least 26 people had been killed in attacks since mid-February.