US-Led Troops Raid Villages near Baghdad

24/11/2004| IslamWeb

Thousands of US-led troops are conducting a campaign of raids on towns and villages south of Baghdad, the US military said on Wednesday. Unlike this month's storming of Falluja, west of the capital, there has been relatively little combat since the offensive began on Tuesday, but rather a series of raids on resistance strongholds. In Washington, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States would add an unspecified number of troops to its forces in Iraq and beef up Iraqi forces ahead of the 30 January vote. Some 5000 American, British and Iraqi forces took part in Operation Plymouth Rock that began with raids on villages north of the city of Hilla, the capital of the province of Babil (Babylon), the US military said. The forces looked set to make their way north to areas blocking access to the capital. Towns such as Latifiya, Yusufiya, Mahmudiya and Iskandriya lie inside the area where anti-US fighters have carried out strings of attacks in recent months. The operation comes hot on the heels of a massive assault on Falluja, the largest since last year's US-led invasion. **Falluja assault*** Falluja had been under Iraqi resistance control since April and its recapture was seen as essential to organising the promised US-sponsored January elections. Most of Falluja's 300,000 inhabitants had fled the city before the assault began on 8 November, but fighting is still going on and humanitarian needs inside the city remain unknown. An Iraqi Red Crescent team set off from Baghdad for Falluja but it was unclear how much access it would be granted to the devastated city. Iraq is, meanwhile, pressing ahead with preparations for the elections. More than 200 Iraqi political parties have been approved for participation in the polls, electoral commission chief Abd al- Husayn al-Hindawi said. With the deadline for presenting full electoral lists only a week away, parties and organisations were in the final stages of discussions to form alliances before the official launch of the campaign on 15 December. In January, Iraqis are set to elect 275 deputies to a national assembly, as well as 51 members of the Baghdad provincial council and 41 members for each of 17 other regional councils. **Clashes continue*** Late on Tuesday, fighters opened fire on Iraqi national guard soldiers in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing one guardsman and a civilian, the US military said. In a statement, the military said national guard soldiers had stopped to help the civilian with his car when the assailants drove past and fired at them. One guardsman was also wounded. While in northern Iraq, fighters ambushed a convoy of Kurdish militiamen as they travelled to Mosul on Wednesday, killing three of them and wounding nine others, hospital sources in the nearby town of Arbil said. Mosul, 390km north of Baghdad, erupted in violence earlier this month as US forces fought Iraqis in Falluja. Over the past week, at least 20 bodies of Iraqi police, national guardsmen and Kurdish militiamen have been found in Mosul. The group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Washington's top foe in Iraq, has allegedly claimed responsibility for killing them. In another incident, a bomber detonated his car near a US convoy near Baghdad airport on Wednesday, but only the man was killed and no troops were wounded, police at the scene said. **PHOTO CAPTION*** An Iraqi Red Crescent Society convoy, carrying medical supplies and humanitarian aid, stops at a U.S. military checkpoint as it arrives to the war-torn city of Falluja, November 24, 2004. (REUTERS)