Insurgents in Iraq increase armed attacks

Tim Johnson
Free Press Foreign
1 December 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A resurgence in armed action broke out Tuesday in areas west of Fallujah along a key highway leading to Jordan weeks after a massive U.S.-led military offensive in the city.

U.S. troops in Iraq ended November with 135 deaths, the biggest toll since April, when fighting flared across north and west Iraq in the area known as the Sunni triangle, a region dominated by supporters of toppled President Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim.

Heavily armed anti-American insurgents on Tuesday took over and briefly held nine police stations and highway checkpoints, blowing up two buildings, police said. Drivers reported that insurgents took control of large sections of the highway leading west out of Iraq, stopping traffic and shaking down passengers. "The government will send elements from the National Guard to control the highway since the insurgents are now controlling a large part of it," police Lt. Hameed al Delemi said.

The takeover of police installations came on a day of bombings against U.S. military convoys elsewhere. The worst was in Beiji, an oil-refining town 110 miles north of Baghdad, as a U.S. military convoy went through a bustling area of shops. A car bomb killed seven civilians and wounded at least 15 people. Two of the wounded were U.S. soldiers.

In a simultaneous attack elsewhere in Beiji, insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a U.S. tank, wounding a soldier. Five U.S. soldiers were wounded when a suicide bomber blew up his car along the perilous road from Baghdad to its international airport, destroying an armored military truck. The blast left a large crater in the road. U.S. forces also said a U.S. soldier died late Monday after an explosion hit his patrol north of Baghdad.

The armed action west of Fallujah came just weeks after about 10,000 U.S. troops stormed the city in the bloodiest urban military campaign for U.S. forces since the Vietnam War. The offensive left 53 U.S. soldiers dead. Many U.S. troops remain in and near the city.

Insurgents blew up two badly damaged buildings Tuesday in Khaledia, between Fallujah and Ramadi, a small city on the highway leading to Jordan, police said. "One of them was a police station. It had been attacked so many times before that one side was collapsed and it had already been evacuated," police 1st Lt. Basam al Kubaisi said. "The other building was sometimes used by the U.S. Army." Insurgents also took over six checkpoints west of Ramadi, al Delemi said.

-----------------------------------
Citation: Tim Johnson, "Insurgents in Iraq increase armed attacks," Detroit Free Press, 1 December 2004; Original URL: http://www.freep.com/news/nw/iraq1e_20041201.htm