U.S. and Iraqi forces launch assault

By DENIS D. GRAY
The Associated Press

BILAL HUSSEIN / AP Children look for intact household materials after U.S. forces attacked a suspected safe house used by an al-Qaida-linked group in Fallujah, Iraq.

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The offensive came in response to "repeated and unprovoked attacks by anti-Iraqi forces" against Iraqi and coalition forces, the military said in a statement. The operation's aim was to kill or capture insurgents in the city 60 miles north of Baghdad.

"Unimpeded access throughout the city for Iraqi Security Forces and Multi-National Forces is nonnegotiable," said the statement, issued early today in Baghdad.

Troops of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, Iraq's national guard and its regular army took part in the assault.

The U.S. military said it killed 80 insurgents in the offensive, and that two U.S. soldiers were wounded.

It said troops destroyed many mortar sites, rocket-propelled grenade teams and vehicles used to carry insurgents.

A hospital official reported that 21 people had been killed and 35 wounded.

The military said insurgent attacks and acts of intimidation against the people of Samarra had undermined security in the city, regarded as one of the top three insurgency strongholds in Iraq, along with Fallujah and Sadr City, a Baghdad slum.

Along with U.S. troops, soldiers from the 202nd Iraqi National Guard Battalion and 7th Iraqi Army Battalion were taking part in the operation.

The statement provided no further details of the fighting. An earlier report by CNN said that 2,000 rebels were thought to be holed up in the city and that tanks and jets were being used as troops took the city "sector by sector." Troops were clearing buildings and mosques, CNN said.

Yesterday, U.S. forces attacked a suspected safe house used by an al-Qaida-linked group in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, the military said.
 
Intelligence reports indicated the house was being used by followers of Jordanian terrorism mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the military said in a statement, adding that the followers were planning attacks against U.S.-led forces and Iraqi citizens.

"Significant secondary explosions were observed during the impact indicating a large cache of illegal ordnance was stored in the safe house," the statement said. Explosions continued in the northeastern part of the city for hours.

Also, there were conflicting accounts about the deaths of at least six people near Fallujah on Wednesday after an incident involving U.S. forces.

Iraqis who identified themselves as witnesses said U.S. forces opened fire on a car passing Fallujah on the road from Baghdad. The driver was shot in the head and lost control of the car, which plunged into a canal, said Hussein Alwan, who lives near the scene.

A man was brought to Fallujah General Hospital late Wednesday with a bullet wound to the head, Dr. Ahmed Khalil said. Later, the bodies of two women and five children also were brought to the hospital after being recovered from the submerged vehicle, witnesses said.

But the U.S. military said it fired only warning shots at a vehicle driving erratically toward a convoy on the road between Ramadi and Fallujah.

1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert, a U.S. Marine spokesman, said the vehicle then swerved off the road, nose-dived into a canal and became submerged.

"The male driver — believed to be the vehicle's only occupant — exited the vehicle and was treated on the scene by a U.S. Navy corpsman," Gilbert said in a statement. However, Iraqi police responding to the incident later recovered six bodies from the submerged vehicle and took them to Ramadi, Gilbert said.

The two accounts could not immediately be reconciled.

In the safe-house attack, witnesses said two houses were flattened and four others damaged in the strike.

At least four Iraqis were killed — including two women and one child — and eight wounded, said Khalil, the doctor.

"Multinational forces take great care to minimize collateral damage and civilian casualties," the military said in the statement. "Terrorists' placement of weapons caches in homes, schools, hospitals and mosques continues to put innocent civilians at risk."

U.S. jets, tanks and artillery units have repeatedly targeted al-Zarqawi's network in Fallujah in recent weeks as U.S.-led forces seek to assert control over insurgent enclaves ahead of elections slated for January.

Doctors said scores of civilians have been killed and wounded in the strikes.

Reuters contributed to this report