Offensive leaves Iraq city reeling from casualties

By Thomas S. Mulligan and Suhail Ahmed
Los Angeles Times

JIM MACMILLAN / AP U.S. Army soldiers patrol in Samarra, Iraq, yesterday on the day after a major U.S. military incursion into the city.

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

The morgue in Samarra's main hospital was filled to overflowing, requiring the dead to be laid out on the floor in an unrefrigerated hall, said Nura abid Bakir, director of the Red Crescent branch in the northern Iraq province of Salahuddin, where Samarra is located. She cited reports from Red Crescent volunteers who had been to the hospital.

Military authorities said 125 insurgents were killed and more than 80 captured in what is meant to be the first of a number of large-scale strikes to quell resistance in rebel hot spots and enable national elections to proceed safely and with the broadest possible participation next January.

The authorities said the city was largely under control. Over the two days, one U.S. soldier was killed and four wounded. Three members of the Iraqi security forces also were wounded.

Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, said he was "very confident that the future of Samarra is good."

"This is great news for the people of Samarra, 200,000 people who have been held captive, hostage if you will, by just a couple of hundred thugs," he told CNN.

Batiste praised the performance of Iraqi troops, saying they "really handled themselves well" as they secured the hospital, a revered shrine and centuries-old minaret.

"They're getting better and better trained, better and better equipped. It ought to give us a lot of confidence," he said.

Video of execution

Also yesterday, an Internet videotape was released that appeared to show members of a group calling itself Ansar al-Sunna beheading an Iraqi contracting engineer who worked with the U.S.-led reconstruction effort. Before the execution, the contractor, wearing a white T-shirt and holding his identification card, was shown reading a statement acknowledging his participation in several infrastructure projects.

A different militant group claiming to have kidnapped two Indonesian women in Iraq demanded yesterday the release of an Indonesian cleric jailed in his home country. But the cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, refused to be freed in an exchange, saying hostage-taking is not in keeping with Islam.
 
Bashir, who Washington says is a terror mastermind in Southeast Asia, has been in prison since 2002, accused of heading the al-Qaida-linked Jemaa Islamiyah group. He was arrested three weeks after the Bali bombings killed 202 people that year.

Another video broadcast yesterday on the Al-Arabiya network showed a man purported to be a Jordanian hostage. An announcer said the hostage appeared surrounded by gunmen threatening to kill him within 72 hours unless his company stopped cooperating with U.S. forces.

Meanwhile, in another, ongoing hostage drama, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said yesterday private initiatives to free two French journalists kidnapped last month had frustrated the government's own negotiations with the captors.

More than 140 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since April by a spectrum of groups, with some holding them for ransom and others setting political conditions for their release. At least 26 hostages have been killed.

In Samarra, yesterday's continued fighting and the presence of U.S. snipers on rooftops forced some injured civilians to stay in their homes rather than seek medical treatment and prevented residents from fleeing to a makeshift refugee camp set up the day before in the village of Ad Dawr, about 12 miles north of the city, according to Bakir and accounts from witnesses.

Ambulances were unable to travel into the neighborhoods to pick up the injured, and in some places bodies lay in the street, witnesses in Ad Dawr said.

Guerrillas in hiding

Residents reported that many guerrillas were hiding outside the city center. In previous clashes in Samarra and elsewhere, insurgent forces chose to disappear rather than stand and fight against superior forces.

The refugee camp, a small tent village built by the Red Crescent, had received only a few Samarra residents.

Rallied by radio broadcasts from nearby Tikrit describing the plight of Samarra, volunteers in buses and trucks gathered outside the city to collect refugees, but few residents dared leave their homes while the clampdown on the insurgents was still in progress.

"I am not aware of any case where humanitarian aid is being denied to the citizens of Samarra," said Maj. Neal O'Brien, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division, which is leading the offensive. He added that division leaders are working with Salahuddin Gov. Hamood Shukti to increase humanitarian aid.

"We are encouraging people to stay in their homes. However, we are not denying people the right to leave the city," O'Brien added. "There is obvious concern that anti-Iraqi forces and foreign fighters will attempt to leave the city under the cover of refugees, and in some cases use intimidation as a means to gain refuge with families. That is a known technique of the insurgents."

Focus on Sunni Triangle

Samarra and Tikrit, hometown of deposed President Saddam Hussein, lie inside the Sunni Triangle, a stronghold of support for Saddam's Sunni Muslim Baathist party north and west of Baghdad. Also within the triangle are Ramadi and Fallujah, two volatile cities west of the capital that are likely targets for future large-scale military incursions.

In Fallujah, the military said it launched an airstrike yesterday against a building on the outskirts of town where 15 to 20 rebels were conducting "military-style training." There was no word on casualties.

That attack followed one a day earlier on a suspected hideout of insurgents loyal to Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi. Hospital officials said seven were killed and more than 10 wounded in that strike. The town has been stuck repeatedly by U.S. warplanes in recent weeks.

U.S. aircraft again pounded targets in sprawling Sadr City district of Baghdad on Friday night and early yesterday, as the military continued attacking rebels affiliated with Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. No deaths were reported. A hospital official said two injured people were received for treatment.

Information from The Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune is included in this report.