Ramadi, Iraq – American aircraft launched airstrikes against insurgents in this embattled city Sunday, killing 70 people, the military said Monday. Also Monday, gunmen attacked cars carrying the provincial governor, wounding two of his guards.
The airstrikes, which started Sunday afternoon, were part of an effort by the American military to beat back insurgents in Ramadi, a city of 400,000 in Anbar province and a haven for Sunni Arab insurgents.
About 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, insurgents in four cars were spotted trying to roll artillery shells into a large crater in eastern Ramadi, where a roadside bomb Saturday killed five American soldiers and two Iraqi soldiers, said Col. John Gronski, commander of the Army’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team. An F-15 fighter plane dropped a guided bomb on the area, killing all 20 men on the ground, he said.
Gronski said that no civilians had been killed in the strikes. Ramadi police Capt. Ali Salem, however, said a number of those slain were civilians.
“An American aircraft yesterday bombed a crowd of people that were gathering around a U.S. military vehicle that was destroyed by gunmen earlier in the clashes,” he said. “We transported at least 17 dead people and many more injured ones to Ramadi General Hospital.”
On Monday, gunmen shot at cars belonging to the provincial governor of Anbar, Mamoon Rashid, slightly wounding two bodyguards, military officials said. That night, mortar shells exploded near an American Marine camp in western Ramadi.
Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, has long been a center for insurgent activity. Soldiers and Marines at four bases here fight daily gun battles, dig up roadside bombs, and patrol in extremely hostile areas where snipers fire at them. The city’s main street and the buildings that line it are crumbling and riddled with bullet holes.
After the initial airstrike Sunday, insurgents fired at two American attack helicopters in northern Ramadi, in the Abu Faraj district, an area that has been the scene of a number of mortar attacks and roadside bombs. One helicopter fired back, killing 10 insurgents, the military said.
Some men ran for a house, and 20 minutes later F-18 fighter pilots saw 35 to 40 men leave the house and load weapons into cars. The pilots dropped a bomb on the insurgents, killing all of them, the military said.
On Sunday at 8 p.m., insurgents fired at American troops from an abandoned building across the street from the headquarters of the Anbar governor. Troops called in an F-18 fighter plane, which fired a missile and killed from one to three insurgents.