Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. – 2005-11-12 23:16:04
http://www.uruknet.info/.?p=17705&hd=0&size=1&l=x
AL-ANBAR PROVINCE. Al-Qa’im.
US forces occupy remainder of al-Qa’im following withdrawal of Resistance forces.
US occupation forces stormed into all the remaining neighborhoods of the city of al-Qa’im on Thursday morning after what was described as a “sweeping attack” in which US F-16 and F-18 warplanes, armored vehicles, tanks and hundreds of American Marines, commandos, and members of US stormtroop division took part accompanied by Iraqi puppet army troops.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported eyewitnesses as saying that US fighter bombers intensively bombed the targeted neighborhoods continuously for two hours. More than 42 rockets and cluster bombs fell on five neighborhoods of al-Qa’im before the US attackers advanced on the ground to storm the area.
The correspondent reported that the storming of the neighborhoods took four hours, in the course of which a large number of bombs and land mines exploded by the attacking American soldiers. Resistance fighters staged ambushes on the Americans before withdrawing from the area.
In his dispatch posted at 12:15pm Mecca time Thursday, the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported that US forces have now occupied the whole of al-Qa’im following the withdrawal of all the Resistance forces from the city, apparently concluding a battle begun with a furious American assault launched on Saturday, 5 November 2005.
A Resistance commander in the city of ‘Anah, some 65km to the east of al-Qa’im told Mafkarat al-Islam that the Resistance in al-Qa’im had been able to achieve its objectives in al-Qa’im, inflicting unexpected losses on the occupation forces and their stooges before the battle even began. The commander noted that the number of Resistance men killed in the whole six-day battle for al-Qa’im was no more than the number of US occupation troops lost in the battle for the city’s April 7th Neighborhood alone.
Asked about US claims to have killed dozens and captured hundreds of Resistance fighters, the Resistance commander said: “we’re used to their fumbling and their lies. Honorable news agencies should not beat the propaganda drum for them, just repeating their claims as if they were serious.”
Situation in al-Qa’im following American take-over.
In a dispatch posted at 10:10pm Mecca time Thursday night, the correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam in al-Qa’im reported that after the US occupation troops had seized control of the whole of the city, they set up 11 military camps in the middle of the city focused on the April 7th Neighborhood, the al-Jam’iyah neighborhood, the market areas and the regions in the south and west of the city.
The correspondent reported that the American camps were in fact local houses that the American troops simply occupied and took over. The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent refuted a report by the Iraqi News Agency that the US forces expelled Iraqi families from the dwellings, saying that the houses were in fact vacant when the Americans took them over. The correspondent reported that the US troops selected those houses because they were large in size, and taller than neighboring homes, allowing them good vantage points.
The occupation forces imposed a curfew on the whole of al-Qa’im, banning all civilian traffic and threatening to strike any civilian car that they see on the streets. The entrances to the city have all been sealed by US military forces
House-to-house raids and searches by US and Iraqi puppet forces continued in full swing. A source in the Iraqi puppet army said that in the course of Wednesday and Thursday, they had searched more than 246 houses. In those raids they discovered religious books and pamphlets calling for jihad against the occupation but no caches of weapons, the source reported.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported observing the arrival of Iraqi and foreign mercenary street cleaners who were undertaking to haul away the remains of wrecked American vehicles from the street and alleys of al-Qa’im. He saw eight wrecked vehicles in just two neighborhoods of the city – the ar-Risalah Neighborhood and the 12 Rabi’ ath-Thani Neighborhood.
The correspondent said that the Americans were now searching for people whom they could appoint as puppet “governor,” “mayor,” and “chairman of the municipal council” of al-Qa’im, but so far had been unable to convince anyone to serve them in such capacities.
The correspondent reported that the aim of finding such puppet officials was to provide some measure of verisimilitude to the claims of the American-appointed Iraqi “Prime Minister” Ibrahim al-Ja’fari who had asserted that the “people of al-Qa’im appealed to us against the horror of the terrorists” in their city. Mafkarat al-Islam reported that US forces had arrested Munif Sa’dallah, one of the local notables, after he refused to serve as a puppet official under the new American administration.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in al-Qa’im reported that Iraqi puppet army troops were robbing the houses of residents of the city and looting their belongings, now that the fighting was over. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam in Abu Ghurayb confirmed that report, saying that puppet army soldiers who had been given leave for visits home after serving with the Americans in al-Qa’im had arrived in Abu Ghurayb. The puppet army soldiers could be seen in the Abu Ghurayb Market – dubbed the “Thieves’ Market” – offering household items such as valuable art objects, gold jewelry, and articles of leather clothing for sale at negligible prices
Prior to US occupation of remainder of city, al-Qa’im hospital announces it cannot take in patients due to fighting.
US troops arrest school children, claiming they are Resistance fighters.
Prior to the American seizure of the remainder of al-Qa’im, Quds Press reported medical sources in the city as saying that the then on-going military operations had isolated the al-Qa’im Hospital making it impossible for the facility to receive wounded or ill persons.
The source told Quds Press that the US offensive had caused two of the hospital’s ambulances to be burned up. In addition, the source said, American military forces were even preventing medical teams from rescuing wounded persons who were near the hospital, in addition to issuing threats against medical workers if they provided treatment to Resistance fighters.
Local residents told Quds Press that while the fighting raged, residents of al-Qa’im continued to flee the city for barren desert areas outside the city but away from the American bombing. The witnesses said that four mosques and schools had been bombed by US warplanes.
American troops also arrested a number of school children in al-Qa’im, aged between 13 and 15, claiming that they were Resistance fighters, Quds Press reported. The American bombing also damaged the main water tower in the April 7th Neighborhood of the city.
Hit.
Resistance bombards US headquarters in Hit.
In a dispatch posted at 4:30pm Mecca time Thursday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that Iraqi Resistance forces bombarded the Youth Center in the western Iraqi city of Hit – a facility that US forces have occupied and turned into their local headquarters.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in the city reported residents of the al-‘Ummal neighborhood in the center of town as saying that four 82mm mortar rounds blasted into the middle of the US-occupied center.
Ar-Ramadi.
Two US soldiers die in roadside bombing;
Americans retaliate by shooting Iraqi mother and child.
In a bulletin posted at 12:15pm Mecca time Thursday, Mafkarat al-Islam reported from ar-Ramadi that a short while earlier, an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded in the path of a US Humvee in the city, killing two US troops and wounding two more American soldiers.
That attack prompted the surviving Americans to open fire indiscriminately at passers by on the street. The Mafakrat al-Islam correspondent reported eyewitnesses as saying that the Americans deliberately shot and killed a four-year old boy and his mother with their gunfire, which they said was not entirely random, but looked more like revenge.
Al-Khalidiyah.
Resistance bomb blasts US forces west of al-Khalidiyah.
In a dispatch posted at 3:35pm Mecca time Thursday afernoon, an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US patrol west of al-Khalidiyah on the road to ar-Ramadi.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in al-Khalidiyah reported eyewitnesses as saying that a bomb that had been planted by the side of the road to ar-Ramadi blew up by a passing patrol of four American Humvees. The blast totally destroyed one Humvee, killing or wounding the members of its four-man crew.
Baghdad.
US air raid in at-Taji kills 32 Iraqi civilians.
In a dispatch posted at 11:45am Mecca time Thursday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that US fighter aircraft had bombed the northern Iraqi suburb of at-Taji.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported a hospital source as saying that 32 Iraqis were killed, among them women and children, in the American air raid on residential houses in the at-Tajiyat area on the edge of town in at-Taji.
US occupation forces in Baghdad issued a statement saying that American warplanes attacked targets belonging to the forces of Abu Mus’ab az-Zarqawi, but the city hospital confirmed that all of the dead were civilians.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in the city reported that the Iraqi puppet army acknowledged that the American raid was a “mistake.” The commander of the Iraqi puppet army met with tribal leaders on Thursday morning and promised that official measures would be taken in connection with the “mistaken” American raid.
Two US troops reported killed in roadside blast south of Baghdad.
In a dispatch posted at 11:35am Mecca time Thursday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb had exploded by a US column on the highway between the southern Baghdad suburb of ad-Durah and the Baghdad al-Jadidah area of the occupied Iraqi capital.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported a source in the Iraqi puppet police as saying that a bomb that had been planted by the side of the highway blew up as a column of four US armored vehicles and two Humvees drove past. The explosion disabled one of the armored vehicles, killing two US troops and wounding two more American soldiers, the correspondent reported.
Resistance bomb blasts US patrol in ad-Durah.
In a dispatch posted at 11:01am Mecca time Thursday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb had exploded by a US patrol in the southern Baghdad suburb of ad-Durah.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported residents of ad-Durah who witnessed the attack as saying that a bomb that had been planted by the side of the main road in the suburb blew up as a patrol of five Humvees drove past.
The blast destroyed one of the Humvees, killing or wounding the four US troops aboard. The Resistance group Ansar as-Sunnah announced their responsibility for the attack in a statement distributed around numerous mosques in ad-Durah.
Resistance car bomb blasts joint US-Iraqi patrol in Baghdad’s al-A’zamiyah early Thursday morning.
An Iraqi Resistance car bomb exploded by a joint US-Iraqi puppet army patrol in the east of al-A’zamiyah in Baghdad at 7:30am local time Thursday morning.
The Mafakrat al-Islam correspondent reported residents of al-A’zamiyah as saying that when the joint patrol was passing by, the Resistance used remote control to detonate an explosives-packed car that had been parked by the side of a road near the al-A’zamiyah puppet police station.
The explosion set fire to one of the vehicles in the patrol, killing two Iraqi puppet soldiers and wounding three more of them. Also wounded was one US soldier, the witnesses said.
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