US offensive in western Iraq kills 75
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-09 18:23

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. forces have launched an offensive against insurgents in western Iraq near the Syrian border, and about 75 militants were killed in the first 24 hours, the military said Monday.

It said the offensive, being conducted with U.S. air support in a desert area of Anbar province north of the Euphrates River, was targeting a sanctuary for foreign insurgents and a smuggling route.

The brief U.S. statement didn't say when the offensive by Marines, sailors and soldiers had begun, how many were included, or whether there had been any American casualties.

The Chicago Tribune reported Monday that more than 1,000 U.S. troops supported by fighter jets and helicopter gunships had attacked villages in and around Obeidi, a city near the Euphrates River in western Iraq not far from the Syrian border, on Sunday.

The report, by a journalist embedded with the U.S. forces, said the offensive "was seeking to uproot a persistent insurgency in an area that American intelligence indicated has become a haven for foreign fighters flowing in from Syria."

It said the offensive was expected to last for several days.

Recently, U.S. troops appear to have stepped up their attacks on suspected insurgent strongholds, including some near the Syrian border, where foreign militants may be entering the country to attack coalition forces.

For instance, on Sunday, coalition forces killed six insurgents and detained 54 suspects in raids targeting terror group al-Qaida in Iraq in Qaim, a city near Obeidi, the U.S. military said.

Insurgent violence killed eight U.S. service members in Iraq over the weekend, raising the death toll to more than 300 from a torrent of attacks in Iraq since April 28, when a new Iraqi Cabinet was approved by parliament with seven positions undecided.

At least 1,600 members of the U.S. military have now died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

On Monday, a wave of attacks by insurgents, many of them targeting Iraqi security forces and civilians, continued in Baghdad.

A suicide car bomb killed three Iraqis, police said.

U.S. forces also detained 13 suspected militants, including one who may have plotted an attempt to kill former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the military said.

On Sunday, Iraq's Shiite-dominated parliament filled five of the Cabinet's seven vacancies, including four with Sunni Arab ministers. But one of the Sunnis rejected his post on the grounds of tokenism, and that tarnished the Shiite premier's bid to include the disaffected minority believed to be driving Iraq's deadly insurgency.

Monday's violence included a suicide car bomb in southern Baghdad that hit a checkpoint of two police vehicles at a busy intersection, said police Maj. Mousa Abdul Karim.

Police first said nine policemen and an Iraqi civilian had been killed. But when Karim fully examined the destruction, he reduced the death toll, saying two policemen and one civilian had been killed and six policemen and three civilians wounded.

The U.S. military announced Monday that it had conducted several raids the previous day in and around Baghdad, detaining 13 suspected insurgents, some armed with rocket-propelled grenades.

Two of the suspects were captured in a raid aimed at capturing the leader of a terror cell believed to have plotted the attempt to kill Allawi on April 20, the military said.

Allawi narrowly escaped unhurt when a suicide car bomb exploded near a police checkpoint as his convoy drove him home. At least one policeman was killed and two were wounded, police said.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who was sworn in as Allawi's replacement last week, is still struggling to fill two vacant posts on his Cabinet: deputy prime minister and human rights minister.

After being appointed Sunday to the latter post, Hashim Abdul-Rahman al-Shibli said he could not accept the position.

"Concentrating on sectarian identities leads to divisions in the society and state, and for that reason I respectfully decline the post," al-Shibli said at a news conference.

When complete, the new government was to include 17 Shiite ministers, eight Kurds, six Sunnis and a Christian. Three deputy premiers also have been named — one each for the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, with the fourth held open for a woman.

On Sunday, the Defense Ministry went to Saadoun al-Duleimi, a former lieutenant colonel in Saddam Hussein's General Security Directorate who left Iraq in 1984 and lived in exile in Saudi Arabia until Saddam's fall in April 2003. A moderate, he comes from a powerful Sunni tribe in Anbar province, the homeland of the insurgency.

The Oil Ministry was returned to Ibrahim al-Uloum, a Shiite who was accused of inexperience when he held the post in the first U.S.-picked Cabinet formed in the early months after the American-led invasion toppled Saddam.

The Kurdish environment minister, Narmin Othman, will act as human rights minister until a replacement is found, al-Jaafari's aides said.

Al-Jaafari pledged Sunday to take "all necessary measures" to restore security and said the government could impose martial law, if necessary, to fight the insurgents.

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