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(回答先: イラク国防相、サマラ掃討作戦で「外国人42人を拘束」【アルアラビーヤ/Reuters/共同/日経】 投稿者 木田貴常 日時 2004 年 10 月 05 日 08:09:54)
Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times
Army Sgt. Bill Willett sorted through items belonging to a former Baath Party figure in Samarra on Sunday, including a portrait of Saddam Hussein.
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After 3-Day Fight, U.S. and Iraqi Forces Retake Samarra
By RICK LYMAN and DEXTER FILKINS
Published: October 4, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/04/international/middleeast/04iraq.html?pagewanted=1&th&oref=login
SAMARRA, Iraq, Oct. 3 - American and Iraqi forces in Samarra finished retaking the last insurgent-controlled neighborhood early Sunday, completing a relentless three-day push through this ancient city in a first step toward wresting control of important central Iraqi areas held by Sunni guerrillas.
With the city in hand, American commanders said they were beginning the second phase of the operation, turning over the city to the Iraqi police and military forces the same way they took it - one neighborhood at a time.
American and Iraqi officials said the most difficult challenge was ahead, in re-establishing governmental authority and holding off what is certain to be a new round of attacks from guerrillas who melted away before the surging armies.
The Americans said they had killed at least 125 insurgents, but if the past is any guide, more are likely to be lying in wait. American commanders have long said that they could retake the cities of the so-called Sunni Triangle with ease but that the difficulty lies in transferring the cities to Iraqi security forces that have less training. Until the Samarra attack, Iraqi troops had not done well in combat against insurgents.
For that reason, more than 2,000 of the soldiers in the 5,000-member force that attacked Samarra are Iraqi, and many of them will be staying on after the Americans leave. The local government will come in behind them.
But on Sunday, with the city mostly quiet, the American and Iraqi forces celebrated an early success.
"I guess it's about over," said Lt. Col. David Hubner, commander of one of the four American battalions that joined two Iraqi battalions in the battle. Colonel Hubner was resting in the cool afternoon gloom of the living room of a house that he had commandeered for his headquarters in southern Samarra.
As though a bell had been rung, people began to emerge from their homes on Sunday, gathering in small numbers on some market streets and waving warily at passing convoys of armored vehicles. Here and there, people passed along the hot, dusty streets with white flags waving over their heads.
The quick retaking of Samarra, which had fallen under the control of fundamentalists and other antigovernment insurgents, was welcome news to Iraq's provisional government. With national elections promised by the end of January, concerns had been growing over what to do with cities that had fallen out of government control.
Now, bolstered by their victory in Samarra, Iraqi officials are predicting that the other major cities under insurgent control, like Falluja, will also soon be retaken.
American strategists said they had studied earlier battles with insurgents in Falluja, where troops have never been able to establish much of a foothold, and Najaf, which was taken from Shiite militiamen only after a grinding and costly struggle, and decided on an aggressive and relentless strategy that proved successful in Samarra.
The battle began just before midnight on Thursday with a bombardment of the neighborhoods on Samarra's edge. It was immediately followed by the entrance of the main force of American and Iraqi troops, repelling attacks by insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades and answering their mortar fire with more mortar fire.
"That's when the tide really turned, when we started firing mortars back at them," said Lt. Shawn Tabankin, who led one of the platoons moving into the city. "They were already surprised, but when we started throwing indirect fire at them, they just disappeared."
In past fights in Iraqi cities, insurgents have had time to regroup after the first assault, often buying time by initiating negotiations. But in Samarra, the guerrillas appeared to be thrown off balance by the continuing attack. Some insurgents fled and others tried, unsuccessfully, to counterattack.
The idea, Colonel Hubner said, was to panic the insurgents at the opening of the battle in an effort to scatter them. "We studied what had happened in Najaf and elsewhere very carefully, and we learned some important lessons," he said.
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But if the Americans were pleased with their success, not all Iraqis were. In Baghdad, the Association of Muslim Scholars, which represents more than 3,000 Sunni mosques around the country, denounced the military operation and accused American and Iraqi troops of widespread atrocities in Samarra. The clerics, who spoke at a news conference in Baghdad, said the military action would undermine any support in the area for the elections.
"The hospital is full of bodies, children are buried in the gardens, and there are bodies filling the streets," said Muhammad Bashar al-Faidhi, one of the members of the group in Baghdad who said he was basing his accusations on witness accounts. It was impossible to independently verify his claims.
"These policies will increase the anger of the Iraqi people," he said, "and if the government insists on resolving the crisis in this horrible American way, then we expect that the Iraqi people will not cooperate in any forthcoming election or any other political program."
Also on Sunday, the American military said it had carried out an early morning airstrike in Falluja. The military said the attack, which hit a home where people had been seen moving weapons, was followed by 45 minutes of secondary explosions, confirming the presence of weapons there.
The military said it presumed that a large number of enemy fighters had been killed in the attack. But in Falluja, hospital officials said five civilians had been killed.
Iraqi officials said Sunday that they had found the bodies of a man and a woman, both believed to be Westerners, in a troubled area south of Baghdad.
The man had been decapitated, and the woman had been shot through the head and stabbed in the neck, a hospital official in the town of Mahmudiya said. The official said the bodies had been found in the nearby town of Yusefiya. Officials said no identification had been made.
At least three Westerners are believed to be hostages in Iraq - two French journalists and a British engineer, all men. A number of other foreigners, including Indonesians and Lebanese, are also being held.
Rick Lyman reported from Samarra for this article, and Dexter Filkins from Baghdad.
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