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米軍ファルージャ集中で裏をかかれ各都市イラク反乱軍が攻撃中
このニューヨークタイムズ記事は、これまでのアラブ側情報の裏付けになっている。
モスルは、完全に陥落の模様である。軍はファルージャ攻撃の4日目で、南に向けて挟撃作戦を遂行中であるが、モスル襲撃で、機甲大隊を、ファルージャ包囲の交通遮断警戒線分離せざるを得なくなった。
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/international/middleeast/12iraq.html?oref=login&th
November 12, 2004
THE INSURGENTS
U.S. Presses Fight in Falluja; Insurgents Strike Other Cities
By ROBERT F. WORTH and JAMES GLANZ
FALLUJA, Iraq, Friday, Nov. 12 - Rebels mounted fierce counterattacks Thursday against rapid advances by American troops into the southern part of Falluja, while insurgents elsewhere in Iraq appear to have opened up a second front in the fighting by overrunning police stations and laying siege to the provincial headquarters in Mosul.
The invasion of Falluja, now in its fourth day, is seen by military planners as a way to smash the largest safe haven for the insurgency in Iraq. Since the assault began on Monday, about 600 rebels have been killed, along with 18 American and 5 Iraqi soldiers, military officials said.
American marines and soldiers seem to be carrying out a pincer movement in Falluja, pressing insurgents ever farther south in intense fighting. But the military has been forced to detach an armored battalion from its cordon operation around Falluja to help quell violence in Mosul, about 200 miles to the north, siphoning off about a third of the forces that had been put in place to catch insurgents attempting to flee the fighting here.
[On Friday, United States officers said American-led forces had gained control of most of Falluja and that insurgents were trapped in the southern part of the city, Reuters reported. "They can't go north because that's where we are. They can't go west because of the Euphrates River and they can't go east because we have a huge presence there. So they are cornered in the south," Master Sgt. Roy Meek told Reuters.]
In separate incidents to the north and southeast of Falluja, two Super Cobra helicopters were brought down after being fired on from the ground, military officials said. Both Marine pilots and their two-man crews escaped after being picked up by American troops in the area, and one of the pilots was injured, officials said.
In downtown Baghdad, a powerful suicide car bomb exploded on a busy commercial street Thursday morning, killing at least 17 people and wounding at least 30 others. In the evening, explosions rattled across the capital with a frequency not seen here since August, when American soldiers fought a Shiite uprising in the south.
Violence surged throughout the Sunni triangle west of Baghdad, with ambushes, bombings and mortar attacks jolting Tikrit, Kirkuk, Hawija, Samarra and the provincial capital of Ramadi, just 30 miles west of Falluja. The interim government imposed curfews across the string of cities. American military officials have said in recent days that insurgent leaders probably fled Falluja before the assault on the city began and could be organizing the counteroffensive now unfolding across the country.
The insurgents in Mosul stormed a half-dozen police stations and looted the buildings of weapons, ammunition and body armor, police officials and witnesses said. By the afternoon, they had seized five bridges running across the Tigris River, which splits the city in half.
The American military said it had mounted a major counteroffensive in Mosul hoping to contain the violence before guerrillas could seize the government center. But at nightfall, carloads of guerrillas continued to roam the streets freely, melting away at the approach of American troops.
"It's very fluid," Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, an Army spokesman, said in a telephone interview near midnight. "It's been going on for much of the day, and it's still going on."
Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of American forces in northern Iraq, said in an e-mail message early on Friday from his headquarters in Mosul that there had been "some tough fighting" on Thursday, but that the city was "quite calm" at the moment. "I do expect more attacks on Friday," General Ham said, adding that it was "hard to say if the enemy includes some who may have left Falluja, but clearly they are responding to operations there."
The car bomb in Baghdad exploded on Saddoun Street, a wide avenue running through the heart of downtown, and incinerated a dozen cars and destroyed storefronts along the strip. The bomber had tried ramming into a convoy of three sport utility vehicles traveling south, the type of car favored by Western contractors, said Ali Safi, an Iraqi National Guardsman at the scene.
"I was walking in the area when I heard the roar of the explosion," said Alaa Ibrahim, 22, from a hospital bed where he was sobbing next to his mother, his legs sheathed in white bandages. "I then felt myself buried under some debris. I struggled hard and finally escaped, but I only managed to walk a few meters from the scene before I collapsed to the ground."
In Falluja, the Second Battalion of the Seventh Cavalry pressed south and east from Highway 10, which runs across the middle of the city, sparking heavy fighting in the neighborhoods of Resala, Nazal and Jebail. Another unit, the Second Battalion of the Second Infantry, swung south and west through an industrial area, seemingly trapping the insurgents in a pincer.
But in the center of the movement, heading due south, a Marine battalion ran into ambushes, stiff counterattacks and at least one booby-trapped house, all of which slowed their advance. This advance moved through Sinai, a neighborhood known both for car garages and hidden weapons caches, and Shuhada, a relatively modern residential area at Falluja's southernmost edge.
"They're all over the place," a Marine officer, Lt. Christopher Wilkens, said. "They're very well trained."
Still, some insurgents have tried to escape across the Euphrates River to the south and west of the city by boat or swimming. On Thursday, Apache gunship helicopters destroyed five rowboats and a motorboat as insurgents prepared to board them.
Insurgents in the towns and rural areas to the north of Falluja have become more sophisticated in their bomb and mortar attacks, military officials said. In one apparently coordinated attack on Thursday near Karma, one group fired mortars at an American position. As an armored vehicle began moving on the only road leading to the mortar's point of origin, another group detonated a roadside bomb and began firing mortars at the vehicle. No one was injured in the attack.
Military commanders had hoped to take time in the next few days to clear out insurgents thought to be congregating in Karma, north of Falluja, and Amariya, to the south. But with the armored battalion, called a Stryker group, headed up to Mosul, that operation could become much more difficult.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, arriving Thursday in El Salvador at the start of official visits across Central and South America, said the American and Iraqi offensive in Falluja was going well and that hundreds of adversary fighters had already been killed.
"They are well along in that task and they'll finish it successfully," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It will end, and it will end successfully, and it will no longer be a safe haven for terrorists or extremists."
Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged that an unknown number of insurgent leaders and fighters had fled Falluja before the offensive began. "I have no doubt but that some people did leave before it started," he said. "We also know that there are a number of hundreds that didn't and have been killed. Others have been captured."
As American forces continued their advance through Falluja, support troops were filtering into more secure parts of the city to begin what officials called an ambitious relief and reconstruction effort. "The marines and Iraqis are working to bring humanitarian assistance right behind tactical units once areas are clear and secure," one senior American officer in Iraq said in an e-mail message. "There is, for example, already food and water going in to certain areas, and Iraqi medical assistance/supplies going into the hospital."
One of the Super Cobra helicopters came down just west of Falluja after being struck by a shoulder-fired missile. The pilot and crew were rescued by the Third Light Armored Regiment, which is posted nearby. The other helicopter was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade 10 miles north of the city. The pilot was rescued but the burning helicopter was destroyed.
On Thursday afternoon, the Muslim Scholars Association, a powerful group of Sunni clerics that says it represents 3,000 mosques, held a news conference in Baghdad at which it condemned the offensive in Falluja and renewed its call for a boycott of elections scheduled for January. The clerics have been uncompromising in their stand against the Americans and the interim Iraqi government, and it is unclear how much impact their protest will have on the elections. A spokesman for the group said American-led forces conducted dawn raids on the homes of Harith al-Dhari, the group's director, and Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, a senior official, in the capital.
If a widespread Sunni boycott of the elections were to ensue, it could jeopardize the legitimacy of the vote. Sunnis make up a fifth of Iraq and are still embittered after having been ousted from power during the initial American invasion.
American and Iraqi officials have also said they need to dampen the insurgency in Ramadi. The Marines still control the government center and police headquarters, and maintain bases on the edge of downtown, but are fending off daily assaults.
In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, a car bomb aimed at a convoy carrying the Kurdish provincial governor, Abdul-Rahman Mustafa, exploded in the city center, wounding 16 people, news agencies reported. In Baquba, about 30 men attacked an Iraqi National Guard post at dawn, killing one guardsman and injuring three others. A mortar attack on a national guard compound in Hawija wounded eight people, and a car bomb at a petrol station in Hilla injured four.
No word emerged of the fate of three relatives of the Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi , who were kidnapped on Tuesday night. A group called Ansar al-Jihad posted an Internet message on Wednesday saying it would behead the hostages within 48 hours unless Dr. Allawi halted the invasion of Falluja and released all prisoners in Iraq. Those kidnapped were Ghazi Majeed Allawi, a 75-year-old first cousin, his wife and their daughter-in-law.
A Lebanese satellite channel broadcast a tape showing weeping relatives of one of the women begging for her release, Reuters reported. The relatives said the captive, Wasnaa Muhammad Jaafar Husseini, was nine months pregnant. "She's pregnant, and she can't hold up to this," said a sobbing woman who identified herself as Ms. Husseini's sister.
At the scene of the big car bombing in Baghdad, four buildings were engulfed in flames. Fire engines rushed to the area, and the smell of burning rubber, plastic and human flesh drifted through the air. A headless body lay on the ground. A policeman whose car was damaged in the explosion seethed with anger. "I saw a man carrying his little daughter trying to cross to the other side of the street, but he didn't make it," he said, asking that his name not be printed for fear of guerillas tracking him down. "I later saw that the girl's head was almost torn off her body. Is that jihad? What did that little girl do to these terrorists? Do they call themselves holy warriors?"
Robert Worth reported from Falluja for this article and James Glanz from Baghdad. Reporting for this article was contributed by Edward Wong, Khalid al-Ansary, Dexter Filkins, Eric Schmitt, Thom Shanker and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times.
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