Home > Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 17 April 2005

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 17 April 2005

by Open-Publishing - Monday 18 April 2005
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ORIGINAL: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m11165

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 17 April 2005
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org

Sunday, 17 April 2005.

Al-Anbar Province.

Al-Qa’im.

US withdraws forces from environs of al-Qa’im.

In a dispatch posted at 11:50am Sunday morning Mecca time, the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported that after failing to take the city of al-Qa’im on the border of Syria by storm in bloody battles during the week, large US forces have been pulling out of the area around the city since dawn on Sunday. The withdrawals were still under way at the time the correspondent compiled his report.

The correspondent said that so far Sunday morning, four columns of US forces left the outskirts of the city under cover of numerous fighter planes and helicopter gunships. The columns headed towards the city of al-Hadithah also in western Iraq, but east of al-Qa’im.

The correspondent reported that US forces agreed to some of the terms contained in the Resistance demands issued earlier in the week after the failed American offensive. They rejected other demands, however, and it is believed that the withdrawal from the city area today came as a result of the US agreement to one of the Resistance conditions, namely the withdrawal of US forces away from the environs of the city to at least 6 kilometers away.

Al-Hadithah.

Resistance attacks, destroys US patrol boat on Euphrates River.

Iraqi Resistance forces armed with anti-tank weapons attacked a US patrol boat on the Euphrates River at 8:30am Sunday morning local time. The local correspondent for Mafakrat al-Islam reported witnesses as saying that the attack totally destroyed and sank the patrol boat, killing four US troops and wounding three more.

The correspondent quoted a worker on the al-Hadithah dams as saying that US forces extracted four bodies from the western edge of the river after they floated over to the riverbank. The worker said a helicopter came fifteen minutes after the attack and fished wreckage from the boat out of the water.

Al-Fallujah.

Resistance gives US troops in al-Fallujah a bloody night.

Iraqi Resistance forces launched fierce but intermittent attacks on US forces in the al-Fallujah area lasting for several hours beginning on Saturday night and ending at dawn on Sunday morning. The Resistance targeted the US base east of al-Fallujah, and US barracks in the train station in the north of the city in addition to US troop concentrations in the ash-Shuhada’ neighborhood in the south of the city.

The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam in the city reported that 15 mortar rounds blasted the US base in the agricultural area east of al-Fallujah at about midnight Saturday-Sunday. US forces responded with artillery volleys.

Resistance forces also attacked US Marine positions in the north of the city, where they are fortified in the area of the al-Fallujah train station. The Marines were struck by about nine rockets that inflicted heavy losses on them. In the south of al-Fallujah, Resistance fighters pounded the liquified gas pumping station where the Americans have another headquarters in the ash-Shuhada’ neighborhood with eight mortar rounds, destroying the station and killing all those in it when the station itself blew up in a massive explosion.

The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam met with Captain Jawdat Muhammad of the puppet “Iraqi army” who confirmed the reports of the attacks and said, “the American army suffered 41 soldiers killed and 23 wounded very severely during those attacks on the north, south, and east of al-Fallujah.” He added that last night’s attack was the most powerful and most violent since the battles during the US offensive on the city.

The occupation forces for their part issued a general call to arms throughout al-Fallujah on Sunday morning and sealed all roads out of the city to the north, south, east, and west. The city remained closed when the correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam compiled his report, posted at 11:18am Sunday morning Mecca time.

Resistance land mine kills six puppet troops in al-Fallujah Sunday evening. US, puppets respond by gunning down civilians.

In a dispatch posted at 6:45pm Mecca time Sunday evening, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a short while before six Iraqi puppet soldiers were killed and three others wounded when a high-explosive Iraqi Resistance land mine blew up by an Iraqi puppet force patrol on an-Nazal neighborhood street. The blast destroyed a Nissan troop transport vehicle in which the puppet soldiers were riding.

US occupation forces and Iraqi puppet troops responded by opening fire indiscriminately at buildings and houses in the area where the mine exploded, killing a number of Iraqis, including one elderly man aged 78 who was leaning on his cane in front of the door of his house when the aggressor troops decided to spray the neighborhood with gunfire. A young boy was also killed by the same random fire by the aggressors.

Ar-Ramadi.

High ranking puppet officer liquidated in Resistance ambush west of ar-Ramadi.

In a dispatch posted at 6:20pm Mecca time Sunday evening, the correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam in ar-Ramadi reported that a short while before, at 6pm local time Sunday, the Iraqi Resistance had attacked the motorcade of a high-ranking officer in the Iraqi puppet forces incharge of areas in western Iraq. The puppet officer and four of his guards were killed in the attack and own more guard was wounded. The cars in the motorcade were destroyed.

The correspondent reported official sources in the puppet regime as saying that an estimated 20 Resistance fighters attacked the puppet officer’s motorcade at the at-Ta’mim crossroads west of ar-Ramadi, killing him and members of his guard.

Baghdad.

Muqtada as-Sadr Office, local notables refute hoax about “Shi‘ah kidnappings,” “Shi‘ah expulsions” from al-Mada’in.

Numerous residents of the al-Mada’in area southeast of Baghdad have refuted the claims, carried by western wire services and satellite TV stations, that some 80 or 100 Shi‘i citizens had been kidnapped by an armed “insurgent” group that threatened to kill them if all Shi‘i families fail to evacuate the city.

Shaykh Ibrahim al-Jabburi, a local notable and tribal chief in the district of al-Mada’in denied that there were any armed actions of this sort. A report carried by albasrah.net said that he called such stories lies that the media had been relaying without doing any investigation.

In a telephone interview with QudsPress, Shaykh al-Jabburi said that the city is indeed tense but the tension is not something that has arisen among the local people, rather it is the tension that exists between the local population, on the one hand, and occupation forces on the other, that routinely storm into houses and carry out arbitrary mass arrests.

A teacher in al-Mada’in Boys’ Secondary School also denied the reports of any sectarian kidnappings and expulsions. Ahmad al-Jumayli told QudsPress, “the city hasn’t witnessed any such events because it exists on the basis of large-scale social relationships that link together the Sunnah and Shi‘ah communities.” Al-Jumayli noted, however, that sectarian tension was on the rise as a result of the actions of the puppet police and puppet “national guard” who launch raids and searches only of houses belonging to the Sunnis. The majority of the members of the puppet police and “national guard,” he noted were remnants of the militias of a number of Shi‘i chauvinist parties. But he said despite such malfeasance on the part of the regime, he did not believe that things would reach a point of mass expulsions.

The Office of the Shi‘i religious leader Muqtada as-Sadr in Baghdad also refuted the hoax, noting that the stories were aimed at sparking sectarian conflicts among Iraqis. A source in the as-Sadr Movement Office told QudsPress that the information being received by the office confirmed that nothing of this sort had taken place. He said that the story was being broadcast solely on the basis of “witnesses” and had not been officially confirmed.

Puppet military sources deny hoax story about “Shi‘ah kidnappings,” “Shi‘ah expulsions” from al-Mada’in.

The Iraqi puppet military denied reports carried by major international news wire services for the last two days that Shi‘i residents of the city of al-Mada’in south of Baghdad had been fleeing their homes after a group of “insurgents” supposedly kidnapped a group of Shi‘i citizens and said they would be killed if all Shi‘ah did not evacuate the town.

The American newspaper The New York Times reported that three brigades of Iraqi puppet forces encircled al-Mada’in after the hoax was broadcast on satellite TV and over wire services. But the puppet army units that entered the city found that the claims were untrue and that the city was entirely calm. The streets were full of people leisurely drinking tea and involved in their daily lives who denied any incidents of kidnapping or threats against the Shi‘i community.

By the end of the day Sunday, The New York Times wrote, Iraqi puppet officials had produced no hostages and Iraqi puppet military officials and the puppet police who had given information about the alleged troubles in al-Mada’in could not be reached for further details.

Also on Sunday, Shaykh ‘Abd as-Salam al-Kubaysi, a spokesman for the Board of Muslim ‘Ulama’ Scholars, the supreme Sunni religious authority in Iraq, denied that any hostages had been taken in al-Mada’in. ’”This news is completely untrue,” Shaykh al-Kubaysi told al-Jazeera television, according to the American Newspaper.

Puppet regime’s first “bomb expert” killed by Resistance bomb trick.

In a dispatch posted at 2:40pm Sunday afternoon Mecca time, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the puppet so-called “Iraqi interior ministry” announced a short while earlier that the first expert on explosives in the Iraqi puppet regime, Kazim Husayn, had been killed by an Iraqi Resistance bomb south of Baghdad on Sunday.

Kazim Husayn was a member of the collaborationist Shi‘i chauvinist Badr Brigades, the armed wing of the so-called “Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq” (SCIRI) whose forces invaded Iraq together with US troops in the spring of 2003 and who since then have formed the backbone of much of the puppet police and military forces serving the occupation.

The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the Iraqi Resistance planted two bombs, one underneath the other by the side of a road. The left the bomb on top above the ground level where it would be visible. Then some of the Resistance men told people in the area about the bomb they had “found.” The “expert” Kazim Husayn was called in by the puppet authorities and he arrived with a whole group of bomb disposal trainees who were to watch him disarm the bomb and learn how it is supposed to be done.

Kazim Husayn succeeded in disarming the bomb on the surface but when he tried to pick it up, he detonated the bomb hidden underneath, killing Husayn and six of his trainees.

The Army of the Partisans of the Sunnah Prophet’s Practice in Iraq announced its responsibility for planting the bomb in a statement distributed around a number of Baghdad mosques on Sunday.

Pakistani report: Afghan puppet regime to send troops to serve US in Iraq.

The Paktribune website reported on Sunday that the puppet “president” of occupied Afghanistan, Muhammad Qarzai, had agreed to send Afghan troops to aid the US occupation of Iraq.

Pakrtibune quoted Radio Mashad as reporting that Qarzai made the announcement following his meeting with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Kabul.

Australia increases its troop strength in Iraq by 50 percent.

Forty-three Australian soldiers departed Darwin on Saturday as a part of a detachment of 450 additional aggressor troops that the Canberra regime is sending to join their countrymen occupying Iraq on behalf of the US. The additional troops constitute a 50 percent increase in the Australian occupation forces. Additional equipment and supplies are also on their way on the ship Tobruk sailing on Sunday for occupied Iraq.

In February Australia agreed to send more troops to serve the United States after the Netherlands pulled its forces out of the aggressor “coalition.” Britain and Japan then called on Australia to fill the gap left by the Dutch, and the Canberra regime eagerly complied. At that point Australia had an 880-man force in Iraq.

The Australian invaders are to be concentrated in areas in the southern Iraqi province of al-Muthanna. Most of the 450 fresh troops are to depart in the next few days, a spokesman for the Australian Defence Ministry said, according to Reuters.

Ninwa Province.

Mosul.

Heavy casualties reported as Resistance blasts US base in Mosul early Sunday morning.

Iraqi Resistance forces mounted a fierce bombardment of the US al-Ghazlani base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul at 6am Sunday morning inflicting heavy casualties. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a source in the Iraqi puppet forces as saying that 25 rockets and mortar shells blasted in to the US base, killing and wounding many US troops. Though he declined to give figures, he indicated that the casualties were in the dozens.

The source said that many of the rockets struck their targets with exact precision, inflicting great losses and sending very thick smoke rising into the sky. The entire city of Mosul heard the sirens wailing from within the stricken US base.

US forces then responded by firing back at what they believed to be the sources of the incoming fire in the wooded and overgrown area north and west of Mosul. The US fire inflicted no appreciable losses in the ranks of the Resistance however.

A source in the Mosul Fire Department confirmed to the correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam that dozens of US troops had been killed or wounded in the heavy bombardment. The US military in occupied Baghdad for its part acknowledged the attack but provided no details on casualties, in keeping with the standard American policy of secrecy.

ORIGINAL: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m11165

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  • Now if you want the real story and not Extremist Propaganda.....
    The grim reaper, riding a firetruck in Iraq
    Sophisticated attack on Marine outpost hints at new tacticsBy Steve Fainaru

    Updated: 11:38 p.m. ET April 18, 2005QAIM, Iraq - Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Butler shook himself from the rubble of a suicide truck bombing. He staggered to the ledge of his three-story guard tower and stared into a cloud of white smoke.

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    Butler, 21, of Altoona, Pa., was temporarily deafened by the blast, but he recalled what came next with cinematic clarity. The white smoke parted to reveal a clean red fire engine. It sped past a mural bidding travelers "Goodbye From Free Iraq" and hurtled directly toward Butler, who shot at the fire engine until it exploded about 40 yards away from him.

    This true-life nightmare occurred last Monday. The attack on this remote Marine outpost abutting the Syrian border caused only minor injuries, but it signaled a dramatic change in the methods of the insurgents, who have staged mostly guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks against the U.S. military for two years.

    ‘Mature and capable insurgency’
    In interviews and in after-action reports, Marines who successfully defended the base that morning described a sophisticated assault that involved 50-100 insurgents.

    The insurgents distracted Marine guards with well-aimed mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, then launched three successive suicide bombing strikes in an attempt to blow up the base and overrun it. The fire engine had both a driver and a spotter, a bullet-proof windshield and was packed with dozens of propane tanks filled with explosives. The blast rained jagged red shrapnel for over a minute and unhinged doors and cracked the foundation of buildings well inside the Marine base.

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    The attack "demonstrates an extremely mature and capable insurgency," said Maj. John Reed, executive officer for the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, which commands U.S. troops here. "It showed its ability to mass a very complex attack very quickly."

    The attack, along with a similar assault on April 2 against the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in which 44 American soldiers were wounded, presents a new challenge for the U.S. military, which is seeking to wear down the insurgency before transferring security responsibilities to U.S.-trained Iraqi forces. American commanders have expressed optimism that the insurgents, while far from defeated, have been significantly degraded as a fighting force; they said attacks have been less frequent and less effective since Iraq’s Jan. 30 elections.

    The number of attacks each day in cities such as Baghdad and Mosul has dropped by as much as 50 percent. Until recently, those attacks had largely been with roadside bombs and suicide car bombs aimed at platoons of U.S. military vehicles that conduct hundreds of patrols each day.

    U.S. commanders said they interpreted the attack here as a desperate attempt by insurgents to reenergize the conflict. "I think they’re losing, so they’re looking at the big attacks to gain some momentum back," said Marine Capt. Frank Diorio, commander of India Company at Camp Gannon, the Marine base near the city of Qaim on the border with Syria. "I give them credit it for it; they’re looking for a big score. We’re going to see this a lot more. But now we know so we can address it."

    Opening salvo
    The battle here began around 8:15 a.m., shortly after India Company’s 2nd Platoon set up for guard duty on the base’s eastern perimeter. Four mortar rounds overshot the base and landed about 300 yards inside Syrian territory, said Cpl. Roy Mitros, the senior Marine on guard, who climbed into a tower to register where they landed.

    Inside Post 8, a bunker on the southeast corner of the base, Lance Cpl. Joe Lampe, 22, of Lacey Township, N.J., and Cpl. Anthony Fink, 21, of Columbus, Ohio, began to receive reports that other guard positions were taking sporadic fire. Then, at 8:25 a.m., a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into their bunker.

    Lampe and Fink were unharmed, but the bunker filled with dust from dozens of protective sandbags. "You couldn’t see like an inch in front of us," Lampe said. "It’s like it just went ’whoof,’ and then it was just dust collapsing all around us."

    Moments later, Lance Cpl. Diego Naranja, 22, of the New York City borough of Queens, radioed from a guard tower just north of Post 8 that he had spotted a white dump truck moving north on a one-lane road the U.S. military calls West End. "But as soon as he called it in, it was like, Blam!," Lampe said "That’s when we got hit by another blast. That one knocked us to the ground."

    Fink said he was convinced that the insurgents concentrated fire on Post 8 as a diversion. "There’s no doubt in my mind," he said. "They knew that was the closest post to them. If they could keep us down, then they could pull the [explosives-laden vehicles] out onto the road." Naranja said he managed to shoot several rounds at the dump truck but it soon disappeared.

    The dump truck reached a fork, then turned west. It traveled beneath four concrete arches and sped toward the base, located next to the border crossing. The U.S. military closed the border for security reasons before the January elections and has not reopened it. The area is now a ghost town of abandoned customs and insurance houses and a 30-foot concrete mural painted with the Iraqi flag.

    The dump truck headed directly toward Butler, who was standing guard under camouflage netting in Tower 2. Butler opened fire, and the truck veered left, ramming a cluster of trucks the Marines had wired together to block access to the base entrance. The dump truck then exploded, sending Butler flying into the tower’s ledge as concrete debris rained on him.

    Phantom firetruck
    Camp Gannon was now under full-scale attack. Mortars and rockets pelted the base from the south and east as most of the Marines, still in bed, scrambled toward the safety of bunkers.

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    About 45 seconds after the dump truck exploded, its purpose became clear: It was to serve as a battering ram to clear the base entrance for the fire engine.

    The firetruck had become something of phantom for India Company. The Marines had beeninformed that insurgents would use one as a suicide bomb. For two months, they had been warned by commanders to be on the lookout for a firetruck, but it had never been seen and some Marines had concluded it wasn’t real. This information came from captured insurgents that are more than willing to give information just to have a hot meal and clean bed to sleep in. They are used to a life of living like rodents in the streets. They tell of insurgent movement and weapons stashes and where’s and when’s that have led coalition forces to crush the insurgents before they can strike time and time again.

    Now, the fire engine was roaring north along the West End. "When I seen it, my heart stopped," said Lance Cpl. Sebastian Lankiewicz, 20, also of Queens. "It was like I was looking at the Grim Reaper himself coming down freakin’ West End."

    The fire engine followed the same route the dump truck had taken, turning left at the fork, going beneath the arches and roaring toward the entrance to the base. Butler, who had staggered to his feet, could hear it before he could see it, the whining diesel engine getting louder behind a cloud of smoke.

    "It was like a movie," he said. "It reminded me of ’Lethal Weapon.’ The smoke was all there and then he just rolled through it, just like in the movie." Smoke "just rolled off the windows. I couldn’t believe what was happening."

    Suddenly it was upon him, and Butler could see inside the vehicle. "It had two individuals in it," he said. "They were dressed in all black, and their faces were veiled and covered. I could see the slits of their eyes."

    Butler fired approximately 100 rounds at the firetruck. Like the dump truck, it turned left just before reaching the entrance. Butler said he thought the driver was either distracted by the withering fire or was unable to locate the entrance.

    The sound of the explosion was "really unexplainable, just the noise and the violence about it," said Diorio, the company commander. Although the fire engine had failed to penetrate the entrance, "they were basically inside our perimeter," he said. The blast was so loud, Diorio feared the worst.

    Slowly the reports began to filter in over the platoon network.

    "Second platoon all accounted for."

    "Third platoon all accounted for."

    "Fourth platoon all accounted for."

    "Thank you, Lord," Diorio whispered to himself.

    "They were definitely close enough to cause a lot of damage," he said. "It was where they detonated it: It was a miracle. If I had to pick a place for them to detonate a firetruck full of explosives, if I had to pick one, I would have picked that place."

    ’Welcome to Iraq’
    The vehicle exploded near the "Welcome to Iraq" mural, which absorbed some of the blast. So did a huge corrugated metal overhang that had provided shade for vehicles waiting in line at the border. It was obliterated, along with a low-slung blue-and-white building that also took some of the blast.

    Only three Marines were wounded, none seriously. A piece of shrapnel pierced Butler’s plastic goggles but did not penetrate the helmet they were attached to.

    First Sgt. Don Brazeal, 39, of Riviera Beach, Md., was inside the company command post when the firetruck exploded. He had also feared the worst and rushed out to the base perimeter. "It’s kind of a parental instinct that took over," he said. "A lot of these guys are young enough to be my sons. Right away I had a mental picture that my kids were not in a good way."

    Brazeal arrived at Post 8 to find Fink firing at about a dozen insurgents. They were shielded by a wall on the other side of the road.

    Brazeal grabbed a rocket launcher and climbed atop a dirt barrier, exposing himself to enemy fire. He fired the rocket at the wall. Fink then did the same. Then the shooting stopped, all the insurgents were killed they said.

    For nearly an hour, mortars and RPGs — Marines estimated as many as 30 — pelted the base. The unit summoned F-18 fighter jets and Cobra helicopter gunships; the Cobras fired machine guns and Hellfire missiles at what an after-action report described as vehicles transporting weapons. The small-arms fire around the base subsided at 9:30 a.m. but continued sporadically for nearly 10 hours.

    The Marines said 19 insurgents were killed and 15 were wounded during 24 hours of fighting. An unknown number of civilians were also reported killed by not so well aimed mortars and flagrant small arms fires by the insurgents.

    This week, the city remained tense. The Marines, surrounded by neighborhoods of hostile residents to the south and east and the Syrian border to the north, believed they had scored a decisive victory, tempered only by the realization that they faced an adversary perhaps more sophisticated than they had known.

    "These guys knew what they were doing," said Lt. Ronnie Choe, 25, of Los Angeles, the battalion’s assistant intelligence officer. "These weren’t just random guys who decided, `Hey let’s do something.’ "

    © 2005 The Washington Post Company

    • Why should this Washington Post article be viewed as anything more than "extremist propaganda," as well? People who visit this sight don’t generally hold this "Fourth Estate" mainstream mouthpiece for the capitalist class in such high regard as you do.

      And, far from this attack being an "act of desperation," as the military officer quoted in the story characterized it, it can also be interpreted as how much more organized the Iraqi fighters are becoming. A company-strength attack was hardly encountered when the US first invaded Iraq.

    • Thank God for the USMC.

  • Here’s a link to the insurgents’ spokesman’s web site:

    www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com