U.S. troops claim a victory, but questions arise
Dexter Filkins and Ian Fisher/NYT Tuesday, December 2, 2003
SAMARRA, Iraq The American convoy that carries cash to two banks here had been attacked before, but this time the troops were ready: Along with the money, they rumbled into this hard-line Baathist city on Sunday with tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and armored Humvees. They even put snipers on the roofs.
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As if on cue, the guerrillas attacked. But according to American commanders, the Iraqis suffered a devastating defeat. A three-hour battle fought in the alleys and streets ended with what the military said were as many as 54 insurgents dead and only five Americans wounded.
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On the streets of Samarra, it seemed, American commanders had finally gotten what they had long sought: a large number of Iraqi guerrillas drawn into the open, where American firepower could wipe them out.
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?'?'We didn't have the immediate intelligence that we knew it would happen, but we had to be prepared for it,'' Colonel Fred Rudesheim, who oversees the city, told reporters Monday. ?'?'And our soldiers responded as they have been trained to, with the immediate action that they know to take.''
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But as local Iraqis on Monday began dragging away the wreckage and counting their dead, it seemed clear that the guerrilla war being fought in the areas north and west of Baghdad had entered a new and more troubling phase. Urban warfare in Iraq seemed likely to raise many more questions, including, in this case, the murkiest: What happened to all the corpses?
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While American commanders said the Iraqi body count came from precise reports filed immediately after a close-range battle, hospital officials said Monday that they could account for, at most, eight dead, and most of those were civilians.
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On Monday morning, only two bodies ?- a gray-bearded old man and a middle-aged woman ?- lay on the bloody steel trays of the hospital morgue.
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More broadly, the battle that unfolded Sunday afternoon underscored a problem that military officials here have been weighing for months: how to ratchet up the pressure on the insurgents, who are killing a growing number of Americans and Iraqis, without alienating the people the Americans are trying to win over.
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As they showed here on Sunday, American soldiers can be fast on their feet and deliver a crushing amount of firepower. But the overwhelming military force, so effective against the guerrillas, seemed to push many Iraqis away.
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?'?'If I had a gun, I would have attacked the Americans myself,'' said Satar Nasiaf, 47, a shopkeeper who said he watched two Iraqi civilians fall to American fire. ?'?'The Americans were shooting in every direction.''
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Adnan Sahib Dafar, 52, an ambulance driver, walked with anger in and out of the morgue, pointing to the dead woman who lay on the bloody steel tray. The woman, Dafar said, had been an employee at the city's big pharmaceutical factory when she was caught in the cross-fire.
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?'?'Is this woman shooting a rocket-propelled grenade?'' said Dafar, who said he saw only eight dead Iraqis. ?'?'Is she fighting?''
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Rudesheim, saying he had not seen any reports of civilian dead, argued that battles like this one will win the support of ordinary Iraqis.
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?'?'Attacks, in our view, are attacks against freedom-loving Iraqis that want to move on with life, versus those that are trying to drag them back to something akin to the former regime,'' he said. ?'?'What we hear is that the people of Samarra are fed up.''
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The guerrilla war claimed another American life Monday, in another stronghold of Saddam Hussein. In Habbaniya, about 120 kilometers, or 75 miles, away, an American soldier was killed when his convoy came under attack. He was the 187th American soldier to die in Iraq since President George W. Bush declared major combat in Iraq to be over.
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Samarra, an hour's drive north of Baghdad, is famous for its golden-domed mosque and a spiraling mud-brick minaret. Just down the road from Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam, it has remained a stronghold for those fighting the American occupation.
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Outside the hospital, a small crowd of Iraqis gathered around a bus that they said had been destroyed in the fighting and began chanting an old refrain: ?'?'Our souls and our blood, we sacrifice to you, Saddam.''
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What the battle on Sunday showed, with little doubt, is that U.S. forces are confronting an enemy that is increasingly sophisticated, in recent weeks carrying out bigger ?- if fewer ?- attacks involving more soldiers and greater levels of coordination and intelligence. On Sunday, Rudesheim and other officials said, the attackers apparently knew the time that the U.S. troops were planning to deliver the money to branches of branches of the Rafidan Bank on the eastern and western edges of the city.
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Captain Andrew Deponai, one of the officers who coordinated the combat, said the attackers ?'?'split their force in half,'' with between 30 and 40 men positioned near each branch in ?'?'squad and team-sized elements so they could attack each bank from all sides.'' They set up ambush points, he said, on likely routes for the American soldiers, and stored explosives and bombs there. The guerrillas concealed themselves in cars in back alleys, using BMW sedans, taxis and pick-up trucks. Like the Americans, he said, the guerrillas had snipers on the roof-tops. It was, he said, ?'?'a well-planned attack.''
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American commanders said both the Iraqis attacked first with guns, then with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. The destruction from the combat was much in evidence Monday, with walls and houses across the city pocked with bullet-holes.
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?'?'If you visit any house in Samarra,'' complained Ibrahim Khalil Ibrahim, a Samara resident, ?'?'you will find shrapnel.''
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The New York Times
