Iraqi attackers wait for right moment

By Christine Hauser and Warzer Jaff
The New York Times

SYLWIA KAPUSCINSKI / KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS Iraqis gather around the wreckage of a U.S. truck, part of a convoy that was attacked Thursday in a west Baghdad neighborhood. The frequent explosions and ambushes are often followed by celebrations.

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BAGHDAD, Iraq — He calls himself God's Fighter and says he is from Fallujah, the town west of Baghdad where Americans and guerrillas have been embroiled in battle.

His role as a resistance fighter, the Iraqi man said, was to drive a getaway car on Thursday after a fellow fighter fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a fuel convoy supplying the American-led military occupation.

"We were hiding day after day, waiting for the right moment to strike," said the man, who identified himself as a former soldier pressed into Saddam Hussein's army and who refused to give his name.

"My fellow fighter had tried about a week ago but missed his target," he said.

"Today we planned it so that I was the driver. We waited in hiding," he said, scanning the street as he described the moment late Thursday morning when their opportunity finally arrived.

"Suddenly we were tipped off by our men down the street that a convoy was approaching. He launched the weapon. Then he jumped into the back seat of the car and I sped off."

The attack on the convoy, on a major highway next to a teeming west Baghdad neighborhood, is a measure of just how dangerous this city has become for the Americans, whether in combat patrols or supply convoys. There are virtually no areas of this city where they are safe from roadside bombs, small arms fire or rocket-propelled grenades.

This incident offered a rare glimpse into the planning and execution of an ambush by a tight network of fighters who hide near major convoy routes in crowded districts, attack, then slip away undetected into dusty side streets or chaotic markets. Their motive is simple, the Iraqi said: to get rid of the military occupation of Iraq.

The thunderous slam of the explosion, and the thick coil of black smoke drifting into the skyline, drew huge crowds of Iraqis who jostled for position, dancing around the burning truck, shouting anti-American slogans and posturing for the cameras.
 
Iraqis in cars and trucks honked and waved as they passed the burning skeleton of the vehicle, which took up a lane on the overpass of the north-south beltway known to local residents as the "fast road" through Baghdad.

But the man who claimed to be God's Fighter surveyed the result of the attack from the edge of the crowd. At first he watched journalists speaking with groups of angry Iraqis, some of whom waved posters of the fiercely anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

He approached their car and leaned in through the open window. "Are you Iraqi?" he asked one of the journalists inside. The answer was affirmative. A curious group of onlookers had gathered around him as he spoke to the journalists, but he waved them away. "Go away, I have something to tell them in private," he shouted at them.

"The Americans say that the Iraqi resistance is composed of former Baathists, and intelligence and security officers," he said, alert to the movement of the traffic and passers-by. "That's not true. Saddam was an oppressor, and I lost a brother because of him."

He said the resistance worked in a network of coordinated groups, dispersed in hiding along known convoy routes. "We use cars without license plates, and never use men who are from the neighborhood where the operation is taking place, for fear of them being recognized," he said.

Some of the fighters act as lookouts, tipping off the others by telephone when a string of vehicles approaches, he said.

The resistance fighters even hold their fire when the strategy suits them. On Wednesday, "a similar convoy went by and we didn't attack them because it coincided with Saddam's birthday," he said. "We didn't want the attack to be simultaneous with the birthday and for anyone to think it was related."

"In the next few days," he said, "I will prove to you again how we strike the Americans."

Roadside bomb attacks and ambushes are an almost-daily occurrence in Iraq, striking the reconstruction and strategic supply effort so central to the occupation of the country.

A crowd of dozens or sometimes hundreds of Iraqis rejoicing around a burning American military vehicle is almost an everyday sight on the streets of Baghdad.

Sometimes, American troops arrive quickly and search suspects among the crowds that gather to dance and shout slogans amid the wreckage. But at other times, their troop strengths stretched thin by the violence, the soldiers appear only briefly to retrieve those wounded or killed, and then withdraw, leaving Iraqis to celebrate.

One man, Bassim Chumakh, was among dozens who tore up the vehicle and burned it, prancing around and speaking with the bravado typical of those wanting to claim a part in a story they see as a victory against their occupiers.

"It was an American truck," he said, as crowds of men gathered around him, almost completely blocking the southbound lane and all trying to speak at once. "We took four burned people out. One of them was alive."

However, a military spokesman, Lt. Col. James Hutton, said there were no casualties in Thursday's attack.

Suddenly, several American military vehicles crested the top of the overpass, swooping down on the crowd, which dispersed in all directions, panicked. Explosions went off, prompting some to hit the road and lie flat.

"Percussion grenades!" someone yelled from the ground. Men rose to their feet and reconstituted into a crowd.