Iraqi US Backed Troops Sweep through Tal Afar
11/09/2005| IslamWeb
More than 5000 Iraqi troops backed by US soldiers have swept into Tal Afar, conducting house-to-house searches and battering down stone walls in the narrow, winding streets of the city.
"Operation Restoring Rights is being conducted to remove terrorists and foreign fighters operating in Tal Afar. This operation is in support of the Iraqi governments efforts to bring safety and security to the citizens of the city," Colonel Billy J Buckner, a military spokesman, said on Sunday.
Buckner said Iraqi and US troops had captured 211 people, killed 141 suspected fighters and confiscated nine weapons caches since 26 August.
While several hundred fighters using small arms initially put up stiff resistance in the city's ancient Sarai district, Iraqi forces reported only two men wounded in the day's fighting.
The US military issued no casualty report for the 3500 Americans in the operation.
According to a local Iraqi journalist interviewed by Aljazeera, there are very few foreign combatants in the area.
"Every time the US army and the Iraqi government want to destroy a specific city, they claim it hosts Arab fighters and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," Nasir Ali said.
When asked about the presence of Iraqi fighters in Tal Afar, Ali said local fighters were confronting the US army.
Border closed
Late on Saturday, the prime minister ordered the Rabiyah border crossing closed in an attempt to stop the flow of foreign fighters from Syria, which is 96km from Tal Afar.
Faysal Ibrahim, the head of Syria's Customs Department has confirmed that Iraqi authorities closed the Rabiyah crossing at 11am (0800 GMT).
Ibrahim said US helicopters were seen on Sunday morning about 500 metres from the Syrian border.
With the Tal Afar offensive under way, the Iraqi defence minister signaled his US-trained forces would not stop
after this operation and vowed to move against fighters opposed to the presence of foreign troops in Iraq everywhere.
The offensive in Tal Afar, 418km northwest of Baghdad, is delicate because of the tangle of ethnic sensitivities.
About 90% of the city's 200,000 people - most of whom fled to the countryside before the fighting - are Sunni Turkmen
who have complained about their treatment from the Shia-dominated government and police force put in place after the US invasion in 2003.
The Turkmen have a vocal ally in their Turkish brethren to the north, where Turkey's government is a vital US ally and has fought against its own Kurdish insurgency for decades. Tal Afar is next to land controlled by Iraqi Kurds.
British soldier killed
Also on Sunday, a British soldier was killed and three others injured in an attack in southern Iraq, the Ministry of Defence said.
The attack in Basra province happened at 11:15, a spokeswoman for the ministry said. She gave no details of the attack but said an investigation was under way.
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