Assault on Fallujah continues
Baghdad, Iraq ? U.S. jets on Friday struck targets in the insurgent bastion Fallujah, and U.S. officials said 10 people — including a family of four — were killed when a car bomb exploded near a Baghdad police station in a bloody start to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Witnesses said American troops detained Fallujah’s top negotiator in peace talks with Iraqi officials that broke down this week.
An Iraqi man reviews the damage after a house collapsed following a U.S. military airstrike on Fallujah, west of Baghdad. By sundown Friday, witnesses reported a series of new airstrikes in the southern and eastern part of the city. According to residents Fallujah has been sealed off by American troops, who prevented residents from leaving the area.
American and Iraqi officials fear a repeat of the surge in attacks that ushered in Ramadan last year. Iraqi Sunni Muslims and many Shiites began Ramadan on Friday; other Iraqi Shiites start fasting today.
U.S. jets and artillery pounded targets in the southern and eastern part of Fallujah — the major stronghold of Sunni insurgents — around sundown Friday as residents were taking the traditional meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan.
U.S. officials indicated the bombing of Fallujah was not a prelude to a major offensive into the city that officials have said they might launch sometime this fall.
The attacks began Thursday after peace talks between Iraqi officials and city leaders broke down over the government’s demand that they hand over terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed responsible for suicide bombings and hostage beheadings.
Al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad group claimed responsibility for Thursday’s twin bombings inside Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone that killed six people, including three American civilians.
| Washington (ap) — The Army is investigating up to 19 members of a supply platoon in Iraq who refused to go on a convoy mission, the military said Friday. Relatives of the soldiers said the troops considered the mission too dangerous, in part because their vehicles were in such poor shape.Some of the troops’ concerns were being addressed, military officials said. But a coalition spokesman in Baghdad noted that “a small number of the soldiers involved chose to express their concerns in an inappropriate manner, causing a temporary breakdown in discipline.”The reservists are from a fuel platoon that is part of the 343rd Quartermaster Company, based in Rock Hill, S.C. The unit delivers food, water and fuel on trucks in combat zones.Teresa Hill of Dothan, Ala., who said her daughter, Amber McClenny, was in the platoon, received a phone message from her early Thursday saying they had been detained by U.S. authorities.McClenny said in her message that her platoon had refused to go on a convoy to Taji, north of Baghdad. “We had broken down trucks, nonarmored vehicles and, um, we were carrying contaminated fuel. They are holding us against our will. We are now prisoners,” she said.Hill said she was later contacted by Spc. Tammy Reese in Iraq, who was calling families of the detainees.”She told me (Amber) was being held in a tent with armed guards,” said Hill, who spoke with her daughter Friday afternoon after her release. Her daughter said they were facing punishment ranging from a reprimand to a charge of mutiny. |