US blaze through Iraqi villages
US troops swept through towns and villages west of Baghdad today, arresting suspected resistance leaders and searching for banned weapons.
Yesterday was the US deadline for Iraqis to hand in their heavy weapons. As soon as it passed, a forceful new American operation called Desert Scorpion was launched.
Meanwhile, US Central Command denied reports US soldiers were wounded in an ambush near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad.
Spokesman Lt Ryan Fitzgerald said it appeared a US military vehicle had caught fire due to “mechanical failure”. But he did not rule out the possibility it was attacked by insurgents.
More than 100 military police and infantry in 30 Humvees and four Bradley fighting vehicles poured into the small town of Khaldiyah, 45 miles west of Baghdad, today as helicopters buzzed overhead.
They targeted six homes and took away nine men, acting on information about where suspected anti-American insurgents were hiding and illegal weapons were stockpiled.
On the outskirts of Ramadi, about 18 miles further west, troops seized four brothers from one home and two brothers from a neighbouring family.
There were no immediate reports of injuries in the raids.
Omar Mishrif Faleh, an older brother of the detainees, said the US troops knew what they were looking for and sought out the house of his brother who had once served in Saddam Hussein’s army.
“Someone must have informed on us,” he said, although he denied that his arrested brothers, aged 20 to 30, were engaged in anti-American activities.
“The resistance is going to increase,” said Abdul Qader Fahd, 30, a teacher who lived nearby.
“Dealing with civilians like this is terrorism.”
In Khaldiyah, US commanders said they were acting on a tip from an Iraqi man captured after he and two others fired rocket-propelled grenades at a routine US patrol on Saturday night.
The other two men escaped and the prisoner pointed to two homes he said the insurgents had been using as a hide-out.
“I didn’t think we would find anything, I figured the bad guys would have left by now,” said US infantry commander Capt Chris Carter.
“But it shows the people here that we are willing and able to do this kind of thing if we need to.”
