[Mb-civic] Iraqi Insurgents Roil Sunni Triangle With Counterattack

[Michael Butler]

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  Iraqi Insurgents Roil Sunni Triangle With Counterattack
  By Edward Wong and James Glanz
  The New York Times

  Monday 15 November 2004

  BAGHDAD, Iraq, - A rebel counteroffensive roiled central and northern Iraq
today, with guerillas storming police stations and setting oil wells ablaze,
as American troops tried to flush the remaining insurgents from the
debris-strewn cityscape of Falluja.

  Tanks and fighting vehicles had smashed through the southern Falluja
neighborhood of Shuhada, the last major rebel stronghold in the city, on
Sunday. But a die-hard band of the insurgents hid in some of the houses and
other shelters at the furthest southern edge of Shuhada and emerged this
morning, after the tanks had left, setting off a five-hour gun battle when
ground troops arrived.

  The wave of guerilla assaults rolled across the Sunni triangle, with the
sharpest surge in violence coming in the morning in Baquba, 35 miles
northwest of the capital. There, insurgents laid siege to a police station
downtown and to one in a southern suburb.

  Guerillas fired from a mosque at American soldiers and piled out of a bus
to take up positions on a rooftop in a part of town called Old Baquba, said
Capt. Bill Coppernoll, a spokesman for the First Infantry Division, charged
with controlling the area.

  American jets dropped two 500-pound bombs on groups of insurgents, and up
to 20 fighters were killed in the clashes, he said.

  Overnight, insurgents attacked an oil storage tank in the north and set
fire to four oil wells in an attempt to cripple the country's leading export
industry. In Mosul, wracked by a daring revolt that exploded last week,
guerillas struck at American patrols with coordinated suicide car bombs,
injuring at least five soldiers in one attack. The Iraqi interior minister,
Falah al-Naqib, said he expected the rebels to mount more ambitious strikes
in the coming days.

  "Today it's quieter in Mosul, but we expect a surge in attacks in the
coming two days," he said at a news conference in Baghdad.

  On Sunday, he said, insurgents snatched an injured policeman from his
hospital bed, killed and mutilated the man and hung his corpse in a public
area.

  The string of loosely coordinated assaults across the Sunni-dominated
parts of Iraq showed that the rebels were ready to carry on their fight
despite the smashing of the safe haven of Falluja in the weeklong American
offensive.

  Throughout the 19-month war, the insurgents have demonstrated an uncanny
adaptability in the face of vastly superior American firepower. That has not
changed with the storming of Falluja. American commanders acknowledge that
insurgent leaders fled Falluja in the run-up to the invasion and have likely
been organizing the deadly counteroffensive unfolding in cities across the
north and around the capital.

  This evening, an Internet audio recording attributed to the country's most
wanted guerilla leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, exhorted fighters in Baghdad
and the Sunni triangle to keep up the war against the Americans.

  "Once they have finished in Falluja, they will head towards you," Mr.
Zarqawi said. "Be cautious and foil their plan."

  American and Iraqi forces have made some inroads into the insurgency. The
leader of a militant group called the Army of Muhammad has been arrested,
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said in a statement. More details of the arrest
of the man, Moayed Ahmed Yassin, are to be disclosed on Tuesday, Dr. Allawi
said.

  The Army of Muhammad is believed to be responsible for the beheadings of
several Iraqi and foreign hostages and is the armed wing of a group created
by Saddam Hussein to fight for the return of the former ruling Baath Party,
Dr. Allawi said.

  The prime minister's office confirmed today that two of Dr. Allawi's
relatives had been released by kidnappers. Last Tuesday, insurgents seized
Dr. Allawi's 75-year-old cousin, Ghazi Majeed Allawi, the cousin's wife and
their daughter-in-law. The next day, a group called Ansar al-Jihad posted an
Internet message saying the three would be beheaded unless Dr. Allawi called
off the siege of Falluja and released all prisoners in Iraq.

  The two women have been freed, but the fate of the cousin, Ghazi Allawi,
remains a mystery.

 

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