Los Angeles Times
October 3, 2004
AD DAWR, Iraq — As U.S.-led forces consolidated their control over
rebellious Samarra on Saturday, humanitarian officials described a hellish scene
within the city in the wake of a two-day offensive by 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi
troops.
The morgue in Samarra's main hospital was overflowing, so some
of the dead had to be laid out on the floor of an unrefrigerated hall, said Nura
abid Bakir, director of the Red Crescent branch in the northern Iraqi province
of Salahuddin. She cited reports from Red Crescent volunteers who had been to
the hospital.
Military authorities said 125 insurgents had been killed
and more than 80 captured in what is likely to be the first of a number of
large-scale attempts to quell resistance in rebel hot spots. The crackdown also
aims to allow January's national elections to proceed safely and with the
broadest possible participation.
The authorities said the city was
largely under control. Over two days, one U.S. soldier was killed and four
wounded. Three membe rs of the Iraqi security forces also were wounded.
Also on Saturday, an Internet videotape was released that appeared to show
members of a group calling itself the Ansar al Sunna Army beheading an Iraqi
contracting engineer who worked with the U.S.-led reconstruction effort.
Before the execution, the contractor, wearing a white T-shirt and holding his
identification card, was shown reading a statement acknowledging his
participation in several infrastructure projects.
Insurgents have used
kidnappings, beheadings and other forms of violence to intimidate those
cooperating with efforts to pacify and rebuild the country.
In Samarra,
the fighting and presence of American snipers on rooftops forced some injured
civilians to stay in their homes rather than seek medical treatment and
prevented residents from fleeing to a refugee camp set up the day before in the
village of Ad Dawr, about 12 miles north of the city, according to Bakir and
accounts from witnesses.
Ambulances wer e unable to travel into the
neighborhoods to pick up the injured, and in some places bodies lay in the
street, witnesses in Ad Dawr said.
"They won't let us deliver water,
blankets or medicine, except to the hospital," said Hisham Idrees, another Red
Crescent official.
The refugee camp, a small tent village built by the
Red Crescent, had received only a handful of Samarra residents as of Saturday
afternoon.
Rallied by radio broadcasts from nearby Tikrit describing the
plight of Samarra, volunteers in buses and trucks gathered on the northern
outskirts of the city to collect refugees, but few residents dared leave their
homes while the clampdown on insurgents continued.
"I am not aware of
any case where humanitarian aid is being denied to the citizens of Samarra,"
said Maj. Neal O'Brien, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division,
which is leading the offensive. He added that division officers were working
with Salahuddin Gov. Hamud Shukti to increase humanitarian aid .
"We
are encouraging people to stay in their homes. However, we are not denying
people the right to leave the city," O'Brien said. "There is obvious concern
that anti-Iraqi forces and foreign fighters will attempt to leave the city under
the cover of refugees, and in some cases use intimidation as a means to gain
refuge with families. That is a known technique of the insurgents."
Samarra and Tikrit, the hometown of deposed President Saddam Hussein, lie inside
the Sunni Triangle, a stronghold of support for Hussein's Sunni Muslim Baath
Party north and west of Baghdad. Also within the triangle are Ramadi and
Fallouja, volatile cities west of the capital that are probable targets for
future large-scale military incursions.
In Fallouja, the military said
it had launched an airstrike about 6 p.m. Saturday against a building on the
outskirts of town where 15 to 20 rebels were conducting "military-style
training." There was no word on casualties.
That attack followed one a
day earli er on a suspected hide-out of insurgents loyal to Jordanian-born
militant Abu Musab Zarqawi. Hospital officials said seven were killed and more
than 10 wounded in that strike. The town has been struck repeatedly by U.S.
warplanes in recent weeks.
Military officials reported an exchange of
gunfire in Ramadi on Friday in which soldiers had killed a man suspected of
setting off an explosion that had damaged two floors of the newly renovated
agricultural center there.
"A positive trace of gunpowder residue
consistent with bomb-making material was discovered on the man's clothing and
skin," the military said in a statement. The suspect's body was turned over to
Iraqi police for identification.
U.S. aircraft again pounded targets in
the sprawling Sadr City district of Baghdad on Friday night and early Saturday,
as the military continued attacking rebels affiliated with Shiite Muslim cleric
Muqtada Sadr. No deaths were reported. A hospital official said two injured
people were treated.
The military also reported Saturday that one U.S.
soldier had been killed about 11 p.m. Friday in Baghdad by small-arms fire. No
further description of the circumstances was given; officials said the incident
was under investigation.
The Defense Department on Saturday identified a
solider killed Thursday in a mortar attack in Baghdad: Army Staff Sgt. Darren
J. Cunningham, 40, of Groton, Mass., had been assigned to the 89th Military
Police Brigade, Ft. Hood, Texas.
Three U.S. soldiers were slightly
injured Friday afternoon when a booby trap exploded as their convoy was
traveling near Mosul, in northern Iraq.
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