Fierce air attacks target Iraqi insurgents

By Alissa J. Rubin and Patrick McDonnell
Los Angeles Times

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The offensive included some of the strongest firepower used in Baghdad since major combat ended in May, and was matched by a similar operation earlier in the day in Tikrit.

In Baqouba, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, U.S. jets and Apache helicopter gunships blasted abandoned buildings, walls and trees along a road where attacks have been so common that troops nicknamed it "RPG Alley" after the rocket-propelled grenades used by insurgents.

"This is war," Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division based in Ramadi in western Iraq, said during a briefing in Baghdad. "We're going to use a sledgehammer to crush a walnut."

Swannack also said the vast majority of attacks on Americans in his region are the work of remnants of former dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath party and Iraqi followers of Saudi Arabia's strict Wahhabi Islamic movement. Just 10 percent of the attacks are done by foreigners, he said.

Near Tikrit on Sunday, the Army launched a short-range missile that hit a house owned by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former Iraqi official the U.S. military accuses of being behind many attacks against coalition forces, a Defense Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Swannack also said that after a pullout from the town of Samara the past weekend, U.S. troops, in a positive step, are preparing to leave the city of Ramadi, a center of anti-American sentiment west of Baghdad, and to hand over patrols to Iraqi police by January.

But the Iraqi civil-defense chief in Samara pleaded for the Americans' return.

"We cannot handle this on our own," Capt. Ihsan Aziz told The Associated Press, saying looters and pro-Saddam guerrillas could move in.

Italians united in grief at service for 19 dead

ROME — Italy paid final tribute yesterday to 19 Italians killed in Iraq, holding a wrenching state funeral on a national day of mourning — an outpouring that underscored how a country divided by war had united in grief.

Tens of thousands of people gathered at St. Paul's in Rome for the funeral Mass, while others lined the procession route three-deep and wept or clapped as the coffins passed under thousands of flags draped from windows, balconies and flagpoles.

The funeral capped an extraordinary week of mourning after the Nov. 12 suicide truck-bomb attack in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah that killed the 19 Italians — the nation's single worst military loss since World War II — and 14 others.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government strongly supported the United States during the Iraq war and sent 2,700 soldiers to help stabilize Iraq afterward. But many Italians opposed the conflict. In February, during a day of global anti-war demonstrations, Rome held the world's single biggest rally, with about 1 million Italians marching.

Also ...

The State Department has decided to nearly double, to 110, the number of U.S. diplomats in Iraq, department officials said yesterday. The contingent will include a large number of the department's 402 Arabic speakers, who are expected to play a key role in President Bush's new strategy of accelerating arrangements for Iraqi self-rule.

... A senior U.S. officer went before a preliminary military hearing in Iraq yesterday over charges he beat up an Iraqi during interrogation and fired his pistol near the detained man's head. Lt. Col. Allen West of the 4th Infantry Division is the most-senior soldier charged with assaulting Iraqis since the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein last March.

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