U.S. Forces in Iraq Regain Control of Rebel Hot Spot

U.S. military officials on Sunday said they had regained control over this insurgent stronghold 60 miles north of Baghdad, recording a significant victory in their bid to recapture rebel-held areas in Iraq before January elections.

As residents of Samarra ventured outside for the first time in two days, U.S. forces launched predawn airstrikes on Fallouja, another Sunni Triangle city that has become a “no-go” zone for U.S. and Iraqi troops. The U.S. military said it killed several militants there and destroyed a large cache of ammunition.

U.S. and Iraqi officials said Samarra would be the first in a series of intensive military thrusts aimed at quelling resistance in rebel hot spots so that national elections can be conducted safely and with maximum Iraqi participation.

It remains unknown whether Iraqi security forces can maintain control over Samarra after U.S. forces withdraw, beginning this week. After a U.S. offensive here last fall, rebels reasserted themselves, making Samarra once again a place American troops avoided.

National security advisor Condoleezza Rice said Sunday that it was premature to declare the Samarra operation “wrapped up, because insurgencies have a tendency to wax and wane.”

“But clearly, the really good news out of this is that Iraqi forces have fought alongside American forces, and ... they’ve done well,” Rice told CNN’s “Late Edition.” In previous offensives, Iraqi troops have refused to fight or have fled from insurgents.

Charles Pena, director of defense policy studies at the conservative Cato Institute, said: “The problem with dealing with an insurgency is that you may gain control in one location, only to find that you have a flare-up in another, and when you put that one out, suddenly the fire you thought you put out erupts again. And we’ve seen this pattern in Iraq.”

Retired Army Col. Bob Killebrew, a former operations planner and professor of military strategy at the U.S. Army War College, said that gaining military control of Samarra may be a first but significant step toward ensuring that fair elections can be held across Iraq.

“To have legitimate elections, the maximum number of Iraqi people need to be free to vote,” Killebrew said. “So Samarra is important

Killebrew said that for the U.S. strategy to succeed, control of Samarra must be held, and be replicated in other insurgent strongholds.

“What we’re seeing right now is ideally what should have happened the first year,” he said. “We lost a year in Iraq, when government collapsed and we had nothing to fill the void and we became invaders and oppressors.”

Asked whether the Samarra operation would be replicated in Fallouja, Ramadi and other no-go zones, Rice said: “The timing on any of these efforts really is going to be taken on the ground, because that is where Iraqi and coalition decision-makers can work together to decide how much military force is used in addition to the political efforts that are there, so I wouldn’t want to make a judgment on which of these areas might look like Samarra.”

U.S. and Iraqi patrols said they encountered only sporadic small-arms fire Sunday when they swept through Samarra’s narrow streets looking for rebel fighters. By U.S. military estimates, about 125 rebels were killed and more than 80 captured. Most of the deaths occurred early Friday in the first hours of the strike, when U.S. helicopter gunships blasted suspected rebel positions with rocket fire.

After two days cowering in their homes, Samarran civilians ventured into the streets, waving white cloths to military snipers on rooftops.

Some residents went to hospitals to identify dead relatives or visit the injured. Hospital workers began carrying out the dead for burial. Soldiers accompanied ambulances through the city to recover bodies that had been hastily buried in shallow graves in residents’ yards.

“Yesterday, we closed off the city, but today we’re letting some people out,” said Army Lt. Col. Blair Schantz, commander of the 9th Engineers Battalion.

Schantz said the Samarra operation had moved from combat to the reconstruction phase, with 24 projects planned, at a value of $1.5 million.

Still, the city remained under a tight military grip. A 7 p.m.-to-7 a.m. curfew was in effect, and the only Samarrans allowed to leave town were women and children. Males of military age were restricted from leaving to prevent insurgents from escaping. To deter potential car-bombers, a bridge over the Tigris River carried signs warning: “No stopping or you will be shot.”

Humanitarian officials complained Saturday that Samarran civilians were under siege by the U.S.-led forces, unable to receive medical aid and supplies or to flee the city for a refugee camp established by the Iraqi Red Crescent Society in Ad Dawr, about 10 miles to the north.

After the complaint, U.S. military officials met in Tikrit with Iraqi engineers and humanitarian officials to coordinate a 25-vehicle convoy into Samarra to carry blood and medical supplies.

Iraqi troops in Samarra late Saturday said they had captured 24 suspected foreign fighters, identified by passports or other documents as 18 Sudanese, five Egyptians and one Tunisian. All were taken to Tikrit, 25 miles to the north, for interrogation.

Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said Sunday that the identities of the suspected foreign fighters had yet to be confirmed.

Officials of the interim Iraqi government have blamed foreign militants for instigating some of the worst violence in recent months. At the top of the list is Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born guerrilla believed to be behind recent kidnappings and beheadings of Westerners working in Iraq.

On Sunday, police in Yousifiya, about 10 miles south of Baghdad, discovered the bodies of a decapitated man and a woman who had been shot in the head. Police said the victims appeared to be Westerners, but their identities had not been confirmed Sunday evening.

The 1 a.m. attack in Fallouja resulted in 45 minutes of secondary explosions, confirming U.S. suspicions that the building was being used as a large weapons and ammunition store, according to a U.S. military statement. Ten to 15 rebel fighters were spotted carrying weapons to the building just before the strike and therefore “a large number of enemy fighters are presumed dead,” the statement said.

In Ramadi, another Sunni Triangle city west of Fallouja, soldiers conducting “a routine vehicle search” discovered more than $350,000 in U.S. currency and more than $250,000 worth of currency from 15 other countries, plus several passports.

More than 100 people demonstrated peacefully in front of a government building in Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, to reclaim property lost during the Saddam Hussein regime. The protesters represented families uprooted from their homes in Kirkuk and forcibly relocated in a move to disperse ethnic Kurds and Turkmens.

In Baghdad early today, a car bomb exploded near a recruiting center for Iraqi security forces. Ambulances, police cars and military vehicles quickly converged on the scene. Witnesses said they had seen dead and wounded, but there was no immediate casualty count.

Staff writers Esther Schrader in Washington and Suhail Ahmed and Raheem Salman in Baghdad and special correspondents in Fallouja and Kirkuk contributed to this report.