Fallujah Iraq.

Thunder Run

I just got finished reading Thunder Run a book about the US armor taking Baghdad. The Iraqis had as much time as they wanted to dig in and the M1 drove right though them. Everything the Iraqis throw a them bounced right off. In Fallujah you send in the tanks coverd by Warthogs and helos you got the town

 

Really tj? I saw a video on a Russian website since lost of an M-1 tank that hit an IED on a street. It was pretty gruesome to see the tank burning and being chewed to pieces by RPGs. You'll think twice about being in a tank when you see the driver dead on front of the tank and the rest of the getting shot to pieces as they try to get out of the burning tank. It was an M-1 Abrams.

Here's the latest from Fallujah. I also read on Asia News that 35 Marines have been captured. It is yet to be verified. It is in the Indian media also.

1 hour, 46 minutes ago Middle East - AP


By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. troops backed by thunderous air and artillery barrages launched a ground offensive Monday to seize key insurgent strongholds inside Fallujah, the city that became Iraq (news - web sites)'s major sanctuary for Islamic extremists who fought Marines to a standstill last April.


Two Marines were killed when their bulldozer flipped over into the Euphrates near Fallujah, and a military spokesman estimated 42 insurgents were killed across the city in bombardment and skirmishes before the main assault began.


Hours after starting the offensive, U.S. tanks and Humvees from the 1st Infantry Division entered the northeastern Askari neighborhood, the first ground assault into an insurgent bastion.


In the northwestern area of the city, U.S. troops advanced slowly after dusk on the Jolan neighborhood, a warren of alleyways where Sunni militants have dug in. Artillery, tanks and warplanes pounded the district's northern edge, softening the defenses and trying to set off any bombs or boobytraps planted by the militants.


Marines were visible on rooftops in Jolan. This reporter, located at a U.S. camp near the city, saw orange explosions lighting up the district's palm trees, minarets and dusty roofs, and a fire burning on the city's edge.


Heavy firing continued into the pre-dawn hours Tuesday, and residents reached by satellite telephone reported the constant drone of warplanes overhead.


U.S. troops cut off electricity to the city, and most private generators were not working. Residents said they were without running water and were worried about food shortages because most shops in the city have been closed for the past two days.


Masked insurgents roamed Fallujah streets throughout the day. One group of four fighters, two of them draped with belts of ammunition, moved through narrow passageways, firing on U.S. forces with small arms and mortars. Mosque loudspeakers blared, "God is great, God is great."


Just outside the Jolan and Askari neighborhoods, Iraqi troops deployed with U.S. forces took over a train station after the Americans fired on it to drive off fighters.


The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, predicted a "major confrontation" in the operation he said was called "al-Fajr," Arabic for "dawn." He told reporters in Washington that 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. troops along with a smaller number of Iraqi forces were encircling the city.


Overall, the main force did not appear to have moved deeply into Fallujah on Monday, the first full day of the operation. Most U.S. units appeared to be lined up at the edge of their neighborhoods with some scouts and perhaps special operators venturing inside.


The offensive is considered the most important military effort to re-establish government control over Sunni strongholds west of Baghdad before elections in January.


"One part of the country cannot remain under the rule of assassins ... and the remnants of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said. He predicted "there aren't going be large numbers of civilians killed and certainly not by U.S. forces."


A doctor at a clinic in Fallujah, Mohammed Amer, reported 12 people were killed. Seventeen others, including a 5-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy, were wounded, he said.


About 3,000 insurgents were barricaded in Fallujah, U.S. commanders have estimated. Casey said some insurgents slipped away but others "have moved in." U.S. military officials believe 20 percent of Fallujah's fighters are foreigners, who are believed to be followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.


Casey said 50 to 70 percent of the city's 200,000 residents have fled. The numbers are in dispute, however, with some putting the population at 300,000. Residents said about half that number left in October, but many drifted back.


Some 5,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers were massed in the desert on Fallujah's northern edge. They were joined by 2,000 to 4,000 Iraqi troops.





Rumsfeld called reports of some Iraqi recruits not showing up to fight "an isolated problem," and Casey said the no-shows "did not have a significant impact" on the operation.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who gave the green light for the offensive, also announced a round-the-clock curfew in Fallujah and another nearby insurgent stronghold, Ramadi.

"The people of Fallujah have been taken hostage ... and you need to free them from their grip," he told Iraqi soldiers who swarmed around him during a visit to the main U.S. base outside Fallujah.

"May they go to hell!" the soldiers shouted, and Allawi replied: "To hell they will go."

U.S. commanders have avoided any public estimate on how long it may take to capture Fallujah, where insurgents fought the Marines to a standstill last April in a three-week siege. The length and ferocity of the battle depends greatly on whether the bulk of the defenders decide to risk the destruction of the city or try to slip away in the face of overwhelming force. Foreign fighters may choose to fight to the end, but it's unclear how many of them are in the city.

Rumsfeld said insurgents would likely put up a tough fight. "Listen these folks are determined. These are killers. They chop people's heads off. They're getting money from around the world. They're getting recruits," he told reporters.

But the Iraqi defense minister, Hazem Shaalan al-Khuzaei, told Al-Arabiya television that he expected the resistance to crumble quickly.

"God willing, it will not be long; it will take a very short period of time," he said, adding that the insurgents might use the civilians as human shields.

As the main assault began in Fallujah, thunderous explosions could be heard across Baghdad, some 40 miles to the east. Militants attacked two churches with car bombs and set off blasts at a hospital, killing at least six people and injuring about 80 others, officials said.

A U.S. soldier was killed when his patrol was fired on in Baghdad, the military said. Southwest of the capital, a British soldier died in an apparent roadside bombing.

The prelude to the Fallujah ground offensive was a crushing air and artillery bombardment that built from the night before, through Monday morning and afternoon then rose to a crescendo by Monday night ? with U.S. jets dropping bombs constantly and big guns pounding the city every few minutes with high-explosive shells.

Associated Press reporter Edward Harris, embedded with the Marines near the train station in the desert north of the city, saw U.S. forces hammering Jolan with airstrikes and intense tank fire. The Marines reported that at least initially they did not draw significant fire from insurgents, only a few rocket-propelled grenades that caused no casualties.

Earlier Monday, U.S. and Iraqi forces seized two bridges over the Euphrates River and a hospital on Fallujah's western edge that they said was under insurgents' control. A team of Marines entered northwestern Fallujah and seized an apartment building.

Capt. Jonathan Riley, spokesman for the U.S. Central Command Air Forces in Qatar, told the AP that an unmanned MQ-1 Predator plane fired a Hellfire missile at an insurgents' anti-aircraft artillery battery in Fallujah, scoring a direct hit.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerics group that has threatened to boycott elections, condemned the assault on Fallujah, calling it "an illegal and illegitimate action against civilian and innocent people."

Arab leaders were muted in their response to the offensive. Media attention focused on ailing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites), which may explain in part why the start of the Fallujah campaign elicited none of the uproar that met the American attempt to storm the insurgent stronghold in April.

 

I have long noticed that the Arabs always freak out when someone does something to *any* of them, including terrorists, while saying and doing nothing to condemn the activities of such terrorists against other people in the world.

 

Yes and it only makes our hatred even bigger.. :-? its Kind of funny they havent realised that yet.

KBO

 

IMHO, the Arabs are so insular, so inner-directed in their outlook, that they never will realize it.

 

I heard on the news this morning that the relatives of an Iraqi Minister have been taken hostage by insurgents.
The reaction among most Iraqis is reported to be 'brother should not fight brother'.
While this fully backs up "IMHO, the Arabs are so insular, so inner-directed in their outlook", it is also a hopeful sign that the insurgents might be starting to alienate themselves from their support base.

Also in the news (which mildly amused me) - a report from the BBC reporter in the centre of Fallujah. American troops are in Fallujah, but not in control - they are under near-continuous fire. The amusing bit wasan interview with an Iraqi, who was against the attack. He was ranting on about the huge numbers of 'poor innocent Iraqi civilians slain by the American forces', until the BBC reporter asked him if he had actually seen any of these casualties. He went a bit quiet, then said, in hurt tones, "what do you want me to say?"

Well, it amused me, anyway.

 

The BBC report on Fallujah:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 998049.stm

It contains a very cool video on 'urban warfar' which is worth a watch...

 

Re: Thunder Run

Can anyone say propaganda.

Corp: indeed they are directed towards their own people, but then again, aren't most others? I mean, for Americans it is obviously and explainably a much bigger deal if 100 Americans die in Iraq than if 100,000 Iraqis die opposing those Americans.

 

Here's a good one.

Hard Lesson in Battle: 150 Marines Meet 1 Sniper
By DEXTER FILKINS

ALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 10 - American marines called in two airstrikes on the pair of dingy three-story buildings squatting along Highway 10 on Wednesday, dropping 500-pound bombs each time. They fired 35 or so 155-millimeter artillery shells, 10 shots from the muzzles of Abrams tanks and perhaps 30,000 rounds from their automatic rifles. The building was a smoking ruin.

But the sniper kept shooting.

He - or they, because no one can count the flitting shadows in this place - kept 150 marines pinned down for the better part of a day. It was a lesson on the nature of the enemy in this hellish warren of rubble-strewn streets. Not all of the insurgents are holy warriors looking for martyrdom. At least a few are highly trained killers who do their job with cold precision and know how to survive.

"The idea is, he just sits up there and eats a sandwich," said Lt. Andy Eckert, "and we go crazy trying to find him."

The contest is a deadly one, and two marines in Company B, First Battalion, Eighth Regiment of the First Marine Expeditionary Force have been killed by snipers in the past two days as the unit advanced just half a mile southward to Highway 10 from a mosque they had taken on Tuesday.

Despite the world-shaking blasts of weaponry as the Americans try to root out the snipers, this is also a contest of wills in which the tension rises to a level that seems unbearable, and then rises again. Marine snipers sit, as motionless as blue herons, for 30 minutes and stare with crazed intensity into the oversized scopes on their guns. If so much as a penumbra brushes across a windowsill, they open up.

With the troops' senses tuned to a high pitch, mundane events become extraordinary. During one bombing, a blue-and-yellow parakeet flew up to a roof of a captured building and fluttered about in tight circles before perching on a slumping power line, to the amazement of the marines assembled there.

On another occasion, the snipers tensed when they heard movement in the direction of a smoldering building. A cat sauntered out, unconcerned with anything but making its rounds in the neighborhood.

"Can I shoot it, sir?" a sniper asked an officer.

"Absolutely not," came the reply.

This day started at about 8 a.m., when the marines left the building where they had been sleeping and headed south toward Highway 10, which runs from east to west and roughly bisects the town. At the corner of Highway 10 and Thurthar, the street they were moving along, was a headquarters building for the Iraqi National Guard that had been taken over by insurgents.

Almost immediately, they came under fire from a sniper in the minaret of a mosque just south of them. Someone in a three-story residential building farther down the street also opened up. The marines made 50-yard dashes and dived for cover, but one of them was cut down, killed on the spot. It was unclear what direction the fatal bullet had come from.

"I don't know who it was," Lt. Steven Berch, leader of the fallen marine's platoon, said of the attacker, "but he was very well trained."

After two hours of bombardment, the sniper at that mosque ceased firing. But just around the corner at the famous blue-domed Khulafah Al Rashid mosque, another sniper was pinning down marines, and airstrikes were called in on it, too. The issue of striking at mosques is so sensitive in the Arab world that the American military later issued a statement saying that the strike on the Khulafah mosque was unavoidable and that precision munitions merely knocked down a minaret.

By noon, the marines had worked their way down to the national guard building, still taking fire from the sniper, or snipers, on the other side of Main Street. Inside was a sign in Arabic that said: "Long live the mujahedeen." Soon the marines had spray-painted another sign over it: "Long live the muj killers."

But for the next five hours, they could not kill whoever was running from window to window and firing at them from the other side of Main Street, despite the expenditure of enormous amounts of ammunition.

"We're not able to see the muzzle flashes," said Capt. Read Omohundro, the company commander. "As a result," he said, "we end up expending a lot of ammunition trying to get the snipers."

At one point, they thought that they had a bead on someone running back and forth between the two buildings. Then Capt. Christopher Spears exclaimed: "He's on a bike!"

And somehow, through a volley of gunfire, whoever it was got away.

At 5 p.m., the marines finally crossed Highway 10 and searched the smoking remains of the two buildings. At 5:30 p.m., a sniper opened up on them.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/i...print&position=

 

Interesting.

A Thousand Fallujahs
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

Thursday 11 November 2004

"The bombs being dropped on Fallujah don't contain explosives, depleted uranium or anything harmful - they contain laughing gas - that would, of course, explain [Pentagon chief Donald] Rumsfeld's misplaced optimism about not killing civilians in Fallujah. Also, being a 'civilian' is a relative thing in a country occupied by Americans. You're only a civilian if you're on their side. If you translate for them, or serve them food in the Green Zone, or wipe their floors - you're an innocent civilian. Just about everyone else is an insurgent, unless they can get a job as a 'civilian'."

- Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl, author of the blog Baghdad Burning

Once again the US has been caught in a giant spider's web. Fallujah now is a network: it's Baghdad, Ramadi, Samarra, Latifiyah, Kirkuk, Mosul. Streets on fire, everywhere: Hundreds, thousands of Fallujahs - the Mesopotamian echo of a thousand Vietnams. The Iraqi resistance has even regained control of a few Baghdad neighborhoods.

Baghdad residents say there are practically no US troops around, even as regular explosions can be heard all over the city. Baghdad sources confirm to Asia Times Online that the mujahideen now control parts of the southern suburb of ad-Durha, as well as Hur Rajab, Abu Ghraib, al-Abidi, as-Suwayrah, Salman Bak, Latifiyah and Yusufiyah - all in the Greater Baghdad area. This would be the first time since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, that the resistance has been able to control these neighborhoods.

Massive US military might is useless against a mosque network in full gear. In a major development not reported by US corporate media, for the first time different factions of the resistance have released a joint statement, signed among others by Ansar as-Sunnah, al-Jaysh al-Islami, al-Jaysh as-Siri (known as the Secret Army), ar-Rayat as-Sawda (known as the Black Banners), the Lions of the Two Rivers, the Abu Baqr as-Siddiq Brigades, and crucially al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Unity and Holy War) - the movement allegedly controlled by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The statement is being relayed all over the Sunni triangle through a network of mosques. The message is clear: the resistance is united.

The Mobile Mujahideen

Fallujah civilians have told families and friends in Baghdad that the US bombing has been worse than Baghdad suffered in March 2003.

The Fallujah resistance for its part seems to have made the crucial tactical decision of clearing two main roads - called Nisan 7 and Tharthar Street - thus drawing the Americans to a battle in the center of town. Baghdad sources close to the resistance say that now the Americans seem to be positioned exactly where the mujahideen want them. This is leading the resistance to insist they - and not the Americans, according to the current Pentagon spin - now control 70% of the city.

There are at least 120 mosques in Fallujah. A consensus is emerging that almost half of them have been smashed by air strikes and shelling by US tanks - something that will haunt the United States for ages. The mosques stopped broadcasting the five daily calls for prayer, but Fadhil Badrani, an Iraqi reporter for BBC World Service in Arabic and one of the very few media witnesses in Fallujah, writes that "every time a big bomb lands nearby, the cry rises from the minarets: 'Allahu Akbar' [God is Great]".

Badrani also disputes the Pentagon spin: "It is misleading to say the US controls 70% of the city because the fighters are constantly on the move. They go from street to street, attacking the army in some places, letting them through elsewhere so that they can attack them later. They say they are fighting not just for Fallujah, but for all Iraq." The mujahideen tactics are a rotating web - Ho Chi Minh's and Che Guevara's tactics applied to urban warfare by the desert: snipers on rooftops, snipers escaping on bicycles, mortar fire from behind abandoned houses, rocket-propelled-grenade attacks on tanks, Bradleys being ambushed, barrages of as many as 200 rockets, instant dispersal, "invisible" regrouping.

Iraq's borders with Syria and Jordan, all highways except a secondary road leading to the borders, plus Baghdad's airport, all remain closed. Baghdad in theory has become an island sealed off from the Sunni triangle - but not for the resistance, which keeps slipping inside. Hundreds of Iraqis are stuck on the Syrian border trying to go back home.

Riverbend, the Iraqi girl blogger quoted above, writes of "rumors that there are currently 100 cars ready to detonate in Mosul, being driven by suicide bombers looking for American convoys. So what happens when Mosul turns into another Fallujah? Will they also bomb it to the ground? I heard a report where they mentioned that Zarqawi 'had probably escaped from Fallujah' ... so where is he now? Mosul?"

He could well be in Ramadi, where hundreds of heavily armed mujahideen now control the city center - with no US troops in sight.

Tough Tactics

The Pentagon is pulling out all stops to "liberate" the people of Fallujah. According to residents, the city is now littered with thousands of cluster bombs. In an explosive accusation - and not substantiated - an Iraqi doctor who requested anonymity has told al-Quds Press that "the US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons". The Washington Post has confirmed that US troops are firing white-phosphorus rounds that create a screen of fire impervious to water.

Dr Muhammad Ismail, a member of the governing board of Fallujah's general hospital "captured" by the Americans at the outset of Operation Phantom Fury, has called all Iraqi doctors for urgent help. Ismail told Iraqi and Arab press that the number of wounded civilians is growing exponentially - and medical supplies are almost non-existent. He confirmed that US troops had arrested many members of the hospital's medical staff and had sealed the storage of medical supplies.

The wounded in Fallujah are in essence left to die. There is not a single surgeon in town. And practically no doctors as well, as the Pentagon decided to bomb both the al-Hadar Hospital and the Zayid Mobile Hospital. So far, the International Committee of the Red Cross has reacted with thunderous apathy.

The Sunni Revolution

When a few snipers are capable of holding scores of marines for a day in Fallujah - an eerie replay of the second part of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket - and when eight of 10 US divisions are bogged down by a few thousand Iraqis with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers, the fact is the US does not control anything in Sunni Iraq. It does not control towns, cities, roads, and it barely controls the Green Zone, the American fortress in Baghdad that is the ultimate symbol of the occupation.

In 1999, the Russians bombed and destroyed Grozny, the Chechen capital, a city of originally 400,000 people. Five years later, Chechen guerrillas are still trapping Russian troops in a living hell there. The same scenario will be replayed in Fallujah - a city of originally 300,000 people. All this destruction - which any self-respecting international lawyer can argue is a war crime - for the Bush administration to send a brutal message: either you're with us or we'll smash you to pieces.

The Iraqi resistance does not care if thousands of mujahideen are smashed to pieces: it is actually gearing up for a major strategic victory. The strategy is twofold: half of the Fallujah resistance stayed behind, ready to die like martyrs, increasing the already boiling-point hatred of Americans in Iraq and the Middle East and boosting their urban support. The other half left before Phantom Fury and is already setting fires in Baghdad, Tikrit, Ramadi, Baquba, Balad, Kirkuk, Mosul and even Shi'ite Karbala.

They may be decimated little by little. But the fact is Sunni Iraqis are more than ever aware they are excluded from the Bush administration's "democratic" plans for Iraq. The only Sunni political party in interim premier Iyad Allawi's "government" is now out. And the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) - the foremost Sunni religious body - is now officially boycotting the January elections. There are unconfirmed reports that Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi, the head of the mujahideen shura (council) in Fallujah and a very prominent AMS member, died when his mosque, Saad ibn Abi Wakkas, was bombed.

The Sunni Iraqi resistance is now configuring itself as a full-fledged revolution. According to sources in Baghdad, the leaders of the resistance believe there's no other way for them to expel the American invaders and subsequently be restored to power - especially because if elections are held in January, the Shi'ites are certain to win. Contemplating the dogs of civil war barking in the distance, no wonder Baghdad's al-Zaman newspaper is so somber: "Iraq will remain a sleeping volcano, even if the state of emergency is extended forever."

 

More. Lotsa stuff on the news.

Falluja Troops under Heavy Fire
BBC

Thursday 11 November 2004

US marines in Falluja have come under sustained attack from several different directions in the headquarters they have set up in the Iraqi city.

The BBC's Paul Wood, who is at the scene, said there was sniper fire from four or five points on the horizon.

The insurgents may have regrouped, he says, after US-led troops took over large parts of the city.

Another BBC correspondent says troops have pulled back from the city hospital, captured on Sunday night.

Meanwhile, two US Cobra helicopters were hit by small-arms and rocket fire in separate incidents and forced to land.

The crews of both aircraft were rescued unhurt, the US military said, but some reports suggest one of the pilots was hit with small-arms fire.

In Baghdad, at least 17 people were killed in a car bomb in a busy shopping area on Thursday morning.

In Other Developments in Iraq:

US-led troops find three Iraqi contractors and an Iraqi taxi-driver in Falluja believed to be held as hostages

Masked insurgents in the northern city of Mosul attack several police stations and loot weapons and ammunition, before setting at least two of them on fire

Kirkuk Governor Abdulrahman Mustafa escapes an assassination attempt in the northern city, but several people are injured in the bomb attack on his convoy.

House-to-House

Our correspondent says the US marines have had to call in four air strikes as they came under heavy fire in central Falluja.

Insurgents appear to have got to the perimeter of the headquarters, he says.

At the same time, a rifle company of marines has been pushing out into the city, going literally house to house to try to clear out the insurgents.

But the company came under continuous fire as soon as it left the base.

US-led forces said earlier on Thursday they had rid more than 70% of the city of insurgents in the battle.

Pockets of Resistance

The rebels are said to be disorganised and leaderless, but still dangerous.

The BBC's Paul Wood, who is embedded with US marines in Falluja, says pockets of resistance remain even in areas the US and Iraqi forces have captured.

Troops are coming under sniper fire all over the city, he says.

Villages to the west of the city, thought by the US to be clear of insurgents, are also reporting sniper, mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire.

Concerns are growing about the humanitarian situation in and around Falluja.

Red Crescent spokeswoman Firdoos al-Ubadi said Falluja was a "disaster", with doctors unable to reach most Iraqi casualties and medical equipment virtually non-existent.

There is little information on the number of military or civilian casualties in Falluja.



Marine Helicopters Shot Down in Iraq
The Associated Press

Thursday 11 November 2004

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - The U.S. military said Thursday two U.S. Marine attack helicopters were shot down in separate incidents near Fallujah and their crews were rescued without injuries.

Both Super Cobra helicopters were hit with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire and were forced to make hard landings, the military said.

One of the choppers was hit 9 miles northwest of Fallujah, the other was hit a mile southeast of the city.

The pilots were not injured, and other helicopters rescued them from the area, the military said. Military quick reaction forces were sent to secure the sites.

The helicopters normally carry two-man crews.

 

Well how about that, America. Mission accomplished eh. Now the rebellion starts in Kirkuk with the fled rebels from Fallujah in the first rows, and this is just the beginning; other rebellions are breaking out throughout the country...

Looks like the US has smashed this one apart so well that the remains are now everywhere at once.

 

Yup , and even in Fallujah the fighting is still not complete.

 

That's mopping up, which most people don't seem to realize does mean fighting and does take time to complete properly.

 

Yes, but in Dutch there is an expression which applies to this situation:
"Mopping with the tap flowing" (my dictionary translates it as "runing on the spot" or "getting nowhere fast" but the literal translation does seem to fit here better. ).

 

Perhaps. But we shall see.

 

The Israelis have been mopping up for over 30 years.

 

Now there really is a case of "Mopping with the tap flowing"

 

Don't worry about Iraq Bush has turned the tap off, Shame he has bu**er all about the fawcet.

 

Well, some US commanders hoped some more guerrilas would be caught in the trap of giving an open battle to the US. Something quite suicidal.


Truly there is somthing difficult to comprehend here. How can a rabble of civilians, albeit most of them being nuts, give such a hard time to the US?

Quite remarkable if u ask me. How do u explain it?