U.S. Reports Iraqi Civilian Casualties in Anti-Insurgent Sweep

By KIRK SEMPLE and SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: November 10, 2005

HUSAYBA, Iraq, Nov. 9 - The American military command revealed Wednesday that civilians had been killed and wounded in heavy fighting here in the past few days, the first such acknowledgment of civilian casualties since the anti-insurgent sweep of this town in western Iraq began last Saturday.

The Marines said that, according to a witness, rebels broke into a family’s home, killed two of the occupants and locked the rest in a room. The insurgents then used the house as a base to launch attacks on American and Iraqi troops, the Marines said. Unaware that civilians were in the house, Marine aircraft bombed it on Monday, reducing it to rubble.

The Marines said they were alerted to the incident on Tuesday evening. American and Iraqi forces have recovered five bodies and rescued a man and a girl who had been wounded, the military said.

The American military command has repeatedly insisted that it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties by carefully weighing intelligence and following strict protocols, and it has said its bombs are capable of near-pinpoint precision.

But civilian casualties, particularly if the numbers grow, could damage American efforts to win the trust of residents here and undermine the insurgency’s influence.

"It is unknown why insurgents used this particular house, which was occupied, when there were so many homes in the area that were abandoned," Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a spokesman for the Second Marine Division, said in a statement.

Col. Stephen W. Davis, the Marine commander of the joint assault force here, said civilians hurt in the campaign had been arriving at military clinics. He did not specify a number.

Criticism of the Pentagon’s strategy in fighting the insurgency continues to bring questions from Congress. In a speech scheduled for Thursday, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was to seek more American troops and more spending on reconstruction. Based on a copy the speech, Mr. McCain will say that the military should emphasize clearing areas, with heavy force if necessary, to establish a zone as free of insurgents as possible.

He will also warn against withdrawing American troops next year, as some in Congress have called for in recent months. "Instead of drawing down, we should be ramping up, with more civil-military soldiers, translators and counterinsurgency operations teams," according to the text, to be delivered at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington research institute.

In Baghdad, two car bombs exploded in rapid succession in a Shiite neighborhood on Wednesday evening, killing 7 people and wounding 30, an Interior Ministry official said. The first bomb, which was thought to have been remotely detonated, exploded at 7:30 p.m. near the Sharufi mosque in Shaab, a Shiite district in northeastern Baghdad. The second bomb was detonated several minutes later, the official said. The blasts damaged the exterior of the mosque.

In recent months, Iraq’s violent insurgency, led by radical Sunni Arabs, has pursued a strategy of killing Shiite civilians to ignite a civil war.

The sweep in Husayba, which began Saturday, has featured scores of high-powered attacks on structures suspected of being insurgent safe houses, battle stations and bomb-making workshops. The marines have hit buildings with 500-pound bombs dropped by F-18 fighter jets, Hellfire missiles launched by attack helicopters, tank rounds and shoulder-launched missiles. Marines, helped by Iraqi troops, continued to sweep the region east of Husayba on Wednesday, trying to choke off what officials regard as a major nexus in a smuggling network that moves foreign fighters and munitions from Syria to central Iraq along the Euphrates River corridor.

In house searches on Wednesday, marines found new weapons stockpiles and detained more insurgent suspects, officials said. North of Husayba, the officials added, marines discovered a house that had been booby-trapped with homemade bombs, presumably intended to harm the American and Iraqi troops.

A suicide car bomb was detonated Wednesday near a police convoy in Baquba, killing seven police officers, and wounding six officers and one civilian, an Interior Ministry official said. In Baghdad, gunmen killed Hammouda Ahmed Adam, a driver for the Sudanese Embassy, on Wednesday, the embassy said. Diplomats from Arab countries have been killed and kidnapped as insurgents try to stop those countries from forging ties with Iraq’s new government.

The military said that on Nov. 5 soldiers in Ramadi captured Majid Adnon Swedowi, whom they identified as a senior insurgent leader.

Kirk Semple reported from Husayba for this article, andSabrina Tavernise from Baghdad. David S. Cloud contributed reporting from Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/10/international/10iraq.html