Hell on earth in Tel Afar

U.S. Raids Militant

Stronghold in Northern Iraq
Militant With al-Qaida Ties Captured
By TAREK EL-TABLAWY, AP

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Sept. 14) - U.S. forces widened their operations against insurgents in northern Iraq on Tuesday, launching an attack on the Euphrates River stronghold of Haditha only days after evicting militants from Tal Afar. Residents also reported American air strikes in the same region near Qaim.

A suicide car bomb exploded near a group of construction workers in north Baghdad Wednesday, killing at least 10, police said.

Gunmen wearing military uniforms surrounded a village north of Baghdad early Wednesday and executed 17 men, police said. Police Lt. Waleed al-Hayali said the gunmen detained the victims after searching the village. They were handcuffed and blindfolded and were later shot.

The Americans called in bombing raids in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of the capital. They captured one militant with ties to al-Qaida in Iraq and killed four others.

In the volatile city of Qaim, about 80 miles northwest of Haditha, residents said clashes broke out between insurgents and coalition forces. The U.S. military did not confirm the air strike.

In the south, a roadside bomb killed four people near Basra - an attack that was a twin to a deadly bombing in the area last week. Iraqi police said the dead were four American contract workers, but U.S. officials were unable to confirm the nationalities of the victims. Last Wednesday, a roadside bomb near Basra hit a passing convoy of U.S. diplomatic security guards, killing four Americans.

President Jalal Talabani, meanwhile, said in Washington that Iraq would not set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, declaring at a news conference with President Bush that the American force still was needed. The Bush administration is under increasing pressure at home to set a date to begin pulling out the 140,000 U.S. troops.

"We will set no timetable for withdrawal. A timetable will help the terrorists," Talabani said. He said he hoped Iraqi security forces could take responsibility for the country by the end of 2006.

Bush pledged to stand by Iraq despite "acts of staggering brutality" aimed at destabilizing the country.

A U.S. Army commander said Tuesday that extremist fighters battling for control of Tal Afar in northern Iraq had committed atrocities against civilians, including beheadings, torture and the booby-trapping of a murdered child's body.

"The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine - in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child's body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents; beheadings and so forth," Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, said in an interview from Tal Afar with reporters at the Pentagon.

McMaster said Tal Afar is not yet under the control of the 5,000 Iraqi government forces and 3,500 to 3,800 U.S. troops that have been fighting together there for the past two weeks. Tal Afar lies about 50 miles from the Syrian border.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, speaking in Washington, said Syria was playing a "dangerous game" in allowing insurgents to penetrate Iraq from Syrian territory.

"Don't think you can benefit from our difficulties. It may be for the short term, but for the long term it might backfire on you," he warned Iraq's neighbor to the West.

Bush also renewed criticism of Syria, accusing it of doing too little to control the flow of fighters across the border.

"The Syrian leader must understand we take his lack of action seriously," he said. "The government is going to be more and more isolated."

Syrian officials say they are doing all they can and deny they offer sanctuary to insurgents.

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