U.S. says ready for new strikes against Iraq towns

15 Sep 2005 15:56:12 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Sebastian Alison

BAGHDAD, Sept 15 (Reuters) - U.S. forces are ready to launch air strikes on towns in western Iraq as they search for Iraq's al Qaeda leader, who has declared war on the nation's Shi'ite Muslims in response to the Iraqi-U.S. offensive in Tal Afar.

U.S. army spokesman Major General Rick Lynch told a news briefing on Thursday that al Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was behind a series of suicide bombs and car bombs in Baghdad on Wednesday and Thursday which killed and wounded hundreds.

"We've got great intelligence which tells us where he (Zarqawi) is moving to and where he's trying to establish safe havens. People focus on the Euphrates river valley because that's where we believe he's coming through," Lynch said.

"Towns close to the Euphrates river valley, including Qaim and Haditha, are towns that we focus on. And as soon as we see him trying to establish a safe haven there, we will conduct operations just like we did in Tal Afar," he added.

His remarks followed a recent statement by Iraqi Defence Minister Saadoun Dulaimi that government forces were ready to hit insurgents in four other northwestern towns after the strike against the rebel stronghold of Tal Afar in northern Iraq.

Dulaimi singled out the towns of Ramadi, Samarra, Rawa and Qaim as targets for future attacks against insurgents, but gave no indication of when the attacks might take place.

Zarqawi declared war on Shi'ite Muslims in Iraq on Wednesday in response to the Iraqi-U.S. offensive in Tal Afar.

Baghdad and Washington have long said arms and insurgents are moving into Iraq from Syria, especially along the Euphrates, and spreading out from there to cities across Iraq.

Syria denies it but Iraq closed parts of the border on Sunday.

U.S. aircraft struck insurgent targets in the town of Karabila, beside Qaim and near the Syrian border, more than 10 times on Tuesday, a hospital source told Reuters.

Iraq's Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government, and the occupying U.S. troops which support it, are facing an insurgency from the country's Sunni Arab minority.

Lynch said the insurgency was likely to become more violent in the run-up to an Oct. 15 referendun on a draft constitution for Iraq, which Sunnis fear will institutionalise the loss of influence they have experienced since the U.S. invasion of 2003 to oust President Saddam Hussein, himself a Sunni.

He added that the United States saw the insurgency as coming from three main sources: what he described as "terrorists and foreign fighters"; "Iraqi rejectionists," or people who do not accept the U.S. invasion; and "Saddamists".

"We believe we are experiencing great success against the most crucial element of the insurgency, which is the terrorists and the foreign fighters," Lynch said.

"The face of that is Zarqawi and al Qaeda in Iraq. We're using all assets under our control in conjunction with the Iraqi security forces to find him and kill him."


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