Baghdad, Iraq – American fighter jets flattened a suspected insurgent safe house near Iraq’s border with Syria border, the U.S. military said today, and hundreds of U.S. troops conducted house-to-house searches in remote desert villages for followers of Iraq’s most-wanted militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
American forces have met little resistance since the first two days of Operation Matador, which began Saturday, aimed at clearing a region believed to be a haven for foreign fighters slipping into Iraq from Syria, the military said. American intelligence indicates the insurgents are either in hiding or have fled, U.S. Capt. Jeffrey Pool said.
Villagers reached by telephone said gunmen still roamed some areas and they continued to be hit by U.S. shelling.
The U.S. offensive – one of the largest since militants were forces from Fallujah six months ago – came amid a surge of militant attacks that have killed more than 420 people in just over two weeks since Iraq’s first democratically elected government was announced.
Snipers opened fire on the motorcade of Interior Ministry undersecretary Maj. Gen. Hikmat Moussa Hussein in western Baghdad on today, killing one of his guards and wounding three, police Maj. Moussa Abdul Karim said. Hussein escaped unharmed.
Elsewhere in western Baghdad, insurgents fired on Iraqi soldiers who were searching the area, prompting a 30-minute gunbattle, said police Maj. Abdul Karim. There was no immediate word on casualties.
North of the capital, a car bomb exploded as an Iraqi army patrol was moving through Baqouba, killing three people and wounding six, police Col. Mudhafar Mohammed said. The dead included two soldiers and a civilian, he said.
In Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, mortar rounds slammed into an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing three soldiers and wounding three others, police said.
Two more explosions rocked the capital today. A roadside bomb hit an American convoy on a highway to the airport, police said. No casualties were reported, but Associated Press Television News video showed a U.S. Humvee, its hood open, consumed by flames. The cause of the second blast was not immediately known.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated Thursday that the insurgency could last for many more years.
“This requires patience,” he said at a news conference. “This is a thinking and adapting adversary … I wouldn’t look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from three, four years to nine years.” The U.S. military said information gained from a “senior terrorist” captured during the operation near the Syrian border led Marines to the safe house Thursday in Karabilah, about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad.
As Marines approached, at least four gunmen fired from the building, the military statement said. U.S. F-18 Super Hornet jets destroyed the building with bombs and rockets, the statement said.
The offensive was launched after U.S. intelligence showed large numbers of insurgents had moved into the northern Jazirah Desert following losses in Fallujah and Ramadi, farther east. The area is believed to be a staging ground for foreign fighters, who receive weapons and equipment there to launch attacks in Iraq’s main cities.
The U.S. military has confirmed five Marine deaths so far and says about 100 insurgents have been killed in the operation. The Washington Post put the American death toll Thursday at seven – six of them from one squad.
Gunmen were taking over the homes of Iraqi citizens to evade Marines, the U.S. military said.
Residents reached by telephone in Saadah and Karabilah said American forces were periodically shelling their villages today.
“The situation is very bad. … Most of the people have fled to the desert,” said Samran Mukhlef Abed, a tribal leader in Saadah.
“The Americans are all around … and medical services do not exist here. If someone is hurt, we have to take him to cities that are far way from here, and that is impossible with the situation.” The U.S. military denied residents’ reports that some areas have been without electricity and running water since the offensive began late Saturday, but said regional hospital services were disrupted when a suicide car bomber attacked the hospital in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, on Saturday.
The U.S. military said it was receiving intelligence from residents who are fed up with the presence of foreign fighters. But residents voiced equal frustration with U.S. forces, who pounded the area with airstrikes, artillery barrages and gunfire.
“They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We have nothing left,” one man told APTN in Qaim. He did not give his name and hid his face with a scarf to address the camera.
Families fled in trucks packed with luggage. APTN video showed plumes of smoke rising from the town.
On the outskirts of Qaim, a group of masked gunmen remained defiant Thursday.
“We will fight whoever comes, whether they are American or Arab,” one told APTN.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up raids in recent weeks.
Iraq’s government announced Thursday the capture of two more wanted insurgents – one a bomb maker with links to al-Zarqawi identified as Seif-Eddine Mustafa al-Naimi, the other a financier for an insurgent group linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq identified as Amar Farid Abdul-Qader Ashur al-Jibouri.
