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U.S.: Insurgents no longer capable of combat operations

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, July 1, 2005

BAGHDAD — The U.S. military reported that Sunni insurgents have lost the capability to sustain combat operations against coalition forces in Iraq.

Officials said the insurgents, most of them commanded by Al Qaida, have resorted to suicide bombings and roadside explosions rather than confront Iraqi and U.S. forces. They said the reduction in insurgency assaults has taken place over the last eight months.

"I think that the ability of the enemy to sustain high-volume attacks is just something that we haven't seen," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, a Multinational Force Iraq spokesman, said in a briefing on Thursday.

Alston said the core of the insurgency amounted to several hundred people, Middle East Newsline reported. He said the total number of insurgents could reach 20,000, with about five percent of them being foreigners.

On Thursday, more than 1,000 Iraqi and U.S. troops continued Operation Sword in the Sunni Triangle city of Hit. So far, 13 suspected insurgents were said to have been captured.

"Resistance is being reported by commanders in the city as light," a U.S. military statement said. "No foreign fighter presence has been detected within the city."

Maj. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit, said Operation Sword and similar missions were meant to deny insurgency sanctuaries in the Anbar province near the Syrian border. Conway said the U.S.-led coalition was also trying to encourage Iraqis not to cooperate with the insurgents.

"It tells the insurgent that there will be none of those types of sanctuary in Al Anbar," Conway told a Pentagon briefing on Thursday. "It passes a message to the local civilians that we're going to try to ensure that you are not intimidated by the presence of these forces and that it kills terrorists that are coming in from the Syrian border."

Officials said the last major insurgency confrontation took place in Faluja in November 2004. They said U.S. forces drove thousands of insurgents — a combination of Al Qaida operatives and former Saddam Hussein officers — from the city.

In the spring of 2005, Sunni insurgents began to increasingly employ suicide bombers and roadside explosives, officials said. They said many car bombers were thwarted because of a steadily improving intelligence network and poorly-assembled explosives that failed to detonate.

"We see increased use of suicide and VBIEDs [vehicle borne IEDs] — the thing that gives you the big blast and possibly causes more casualties, seems to be more media newsworthy — and believe me, they're very sensitive to that," Conway said. "We see that in everything that they're doing. At the same time, those types of blasts are having less effect on our troops."


Copyright © 2005 East West Services, Inc.

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