8 Marines among 29 killed in Iraq
Foreign Desk Report
BAGHDAD—US soldiers killed at least 29 insurgents in a drive to root out
militants in western Iraq, the military said on Friday, after US
President George W. Bush vowed not to waver in his campaign against
Islamic extremists.
In grisly new evidence of Iraq’s deepening sectarian strife, police said
the bodies of 22 men who had been bound with wire handcuffs and shot had
been found in southeastern Iraq.
In Basra, British troops were holding 12 men, including members of the
police, on suspicion of attacking foreign troops.
US officials said their latest campaign near the Syrian border was
scoring successes as about 1,000 soldiers backed by combat aircraft seek
to shut down what they say is a key route for arms and fighters into the
country.
At least 20 militants were killed on Wednesday when US aircraft bombed a
hotel that militants had commandeered in the town of Qusayba, while nine
other fighters died in other exchanges with US forces, the military
said.
The military statement did not give any figures for US casualties one
week into the operation.
But the military said separately that six US Marines were killed by
roadside bomb blasts, bringing the total US military death toll to at
least 1,948 since the 2003 invasion.
Seeking to bolster flagging US support for the war, Bush said on
Thursday the Iraq campaign was central to blocking militant plans for a
radical Islamic empire stretching across the globe.
“We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less
than complete victory,” he said in a speech in Washington, declaring
that militants wanted to seize power from Spain to Indonesia.
Bush said the United States and its allies had disrupted 10 serious al
Qaeda plots since the September 11, 2001, attacks, including one to
attack targets on the West Coast using hijacked airplanes and another
involving urban targets in Britain.
The White House said some of the plots were publicly known but the rest
were classified.
US officials say the western Iraq campaign will last at least through
December, seeking to turn back rising insurgent violence before an
October 15 referendum on a new constitution and a vote in December for a
new parliament.
The two polls, and the expected start this month of the trial of Saddam
Hussein, have inflamed tensions within Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority, which
fears its former influence will be permanently lost to majority Shi’ites
and their Kurdish allies.
Grieving relatives gathered in Baghdad to collect the bodies of 22 men
who had been found near the town of Badra, about 110 km (70 miles)
southeast of Baghdad, on Thursday. Chanting “There is no God but God,”
family members picked up the bodies from Baghdad’s morgue and
transported them home in a mournful street procession of flag-draped
coffins.
“These 22 people, why were they killed? What did they do?” one
distraught man yelled. “Why were they killed and then just dumped”?
Relatives said many of the victims were Sunnis.
Some Sunni leaders have accused pro-government Shi’ite militia of
carrying out attacks against Sunnis as revenge for the insurgent
strikes, which regularly kill dozens as car bombs and suicide attackers
hit markets, restaurants and public transport.
In the southern Shi’ite city of Basra, British troops seized 12 men,
including members of the police force, during overnight raids and were
holding them on suspicion of carrying out attacks on foreign troops, the
British military said on Friday.
Some of those detained are also linked to militia groups, a British
commander in the area said, indicating a connection to the hardline
nationalist Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
“In the past two months, eight multinational force soldiers and six
coalition members have been killed by terrorists in Basra province,”
Brigadier John Lorimer said in a statement.
“This terrorism must be stopped and ... this operation was designed to
do exactly that,” he said.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Thursday London suspected
Shi’ite Iran and Lebanon’s Hizbollah group might be supplying technology
and explosives to Shi’ite Muslim militants operating in Iraq, although
he said he had no proof.
Hizbollah and Iran deny the accusations.
US commanders have also said they suspect Iran and Hizbollah of being
the source of bomb-making techniques that they say have reached Sunni
insurgents further north from Shi’ite guerrillas in the south.
These powerful “shaped charges” are partly responsible for an increase
in deaths of US soldiers riding in armored vehicles, especially in the
number of casualties in any one explosion. |
