Marines punish rebels, suffer wounds

[thedrifter]

Marines punish rebels, suffer wounds

By: DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff Writer

FALLUJAH, Iraq ---- As the sun set on Fallujah Wednesday, Cobra gunships swooped over the heads of Marines, firing rockets into buildings where U.S. troops have been battling insurgents for days.

Troops cheered the helicopter attack, which could have signaled progress against a stubborn enemy that had so far limited the Marines' advance into the heart of the city.

In a third day of fighting Wednesday, at least three Marines were wounded, one seriously from a shrapnel wound to his head.


Marines reported killing dozens of insurgents during the long night as tanks and AC-130 Specter gunships blasted away with cannon and Gatling guns at groups of men massing in the city. Marine commanders refused to say how many insurgents they had killed or wounded.

"The enemy paid the price," was all that the commander of the 1st Marine Division, Maj. Gen. James Mattis, would say about enemy dead in Fallujah and Ramadi, where at least 12 Marines were killed Tuesday. "I don't get into counting 'em."

U.S. officials said they held back from launching a bigger offensive into Fallujah from the north Wednesday to allow Iraqi women and children to leave the city and to give the population time to choose between fighting and cooperating with the Americans.

"We are being very aggressive, but at the same time we are being very deliberate," said Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee, who visited troops at positions along the northern edge of the city at about 2 p.m. Wednesday during a lull in the fighting.

Hagee was accompanied by an entourage of field commanders, including Mattis, Lt. Gen. James Conway, I Marine Expeditionary Force commander, and Col. John Toolan, commander of the 1st Marine Regiment, which includes the two Marine battalions fighting in and around Fallujah this week.

"This could be extremely difficult if we fight on their terms in the streets," said Toolan, saying the Marines had been drawn into the city Tuesday earlier than was planned after insurgents ambushed a patrol and seriously wounded a Marine in the first seconds of fighting.

Marines take hits

Toolan and the other brass talked to troops who were dug waist-deep into gravel on a train trestle overlooking a set of buildings where insurgents killed one Marine early Monday, wounded at least two Marines Tuesday and blasted a tank with rocket-propelled grenades a few hours earlier Wednesday, wounding three troops.

The commanders said that by late Wednesday afternoon, their troops had gained a shaky foothold 1,000 yards into the city from the north. Marines had pushed at least two kilometers into town from the south, where commanders said fighting was much lighter and the insurgents more spread out.

"This has been the stiffest place here," Toolan said, pointing back to the cluster of beige brick buildings to the south.

Beyond that troubled block lay is the rest of turbulent Fallujah, where Marines were supposed to have conducted selective raids on suspected insurgents after cordoning off the city Monday.

They instead found themselves engaged in full-scale combat in the streets, where insurgents fired small arms and rocket-propelled grenades before easily blending into the civilian population. The Marines have used tanks and air strikes in some of the heaviest fighting since U.S. troops invaded Iraq a little more than a year ago.

"This is worse than the war," said Capt. Kyle Stoddard, commander of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment ---- the troops that have been fighting in several square blocks of the city since early Monday morning.

"Those were some long, hard battles in there," he said. "This is the real thing."

Stoddard and some of his leaders said the enemy took a beating into the night Tuesday.

"I think the insurgents and foreign fighters tried to make a conventional stand last night," said a Marine air controller who said he wanted to be referred to by his radio call sign, "Woody."

"They showed their hand that they would stand and fight," he said. "And they paid dearly for it."

Some Marines said they did not trust the cool, overcast calm that most of them woke to early Wednesday after a night of fireworks across the city.

Dozens of rebels killed

They said that while the overwhelming firepower and technology of the American gunships and tanks had probably wiped out dozens of insurgents during the night, there were still more out there.

"Oh, I'm sure there's plenty of them left," said Cpl. Philip Cook, 21, of Huntington, W.Va. "There just weren't any more who wanted to mess with us last night."

But the crackle of machine guns and booms of distant mortars reminded all present that there was still a battle going on while the 200 or so Marines still in the northern part of the city were resupplied and the rest on the outskirts consolidated their defenses.

The casualties came early Wednesday and all at once.

Just after 11 a.m., a tank hit by a rocket-propelled grenade some 500 yards into the city hobbled back to the train trestle that Marines have used as a fallback position since they arrived here Monday morning.

Climbing out of the tank turret to extinguish packs that were still on fire from the blast, Cpl. Ryan Chambers, 26, of San Luis Obispo, yelled for a medic.

"Corpsman! Corpsman!" he shouted as other Marines climbed atop the tank to help.

Together they pulled a Marine off the tank and placed him on the back of a humvee.

He was wounded with shrapnel to the head and eye, and another Marine from the tank was badly wounded in the hand.

After seeing his wounded tank crew off, Chambers realized he was wounded, too ---- hit in the upper left arm with shrapnel.

"I saw a couple of guys run, so we went after them," he said as the medic cut off his sleeve. "Then POW! The first one missed us, but the second one got us. They're just going to patch me up and I'm going back in."

The fighting continued ---- with long, nerve-racking lulls ---- all day, with the Marines fighting to maintain their grip on several city blocks.

Insurgents snipe from mosques

Insurgent snipers fired from the minarets of several of 14 mosques visible from atop the train trestle, where Marine officers guided helicopters and troops on the ground.

Only about 20 of 2,000 newly trained Iraqi soldiers showed up to fight on the U.S. side Wednesday.

They were supposed to man roadblocks and defensive positions so that more Marines could join the fight.

Sitting in a bunker where Iraqi troops were supposed to be, Lance Cpl. James Houston, 22, of Oregon, said he didn't expect to find himself in the middle of such heavy fighting.

"Not like this," he said emphatically when asked if it was all that he expected from his second tour in Iraq. "This is crazy."

As did his three Marine buddies, Houston sat in his sandbagged pit covered in flies and stewing under a flak vest and battle gear in the midday sun.

They watched for possible suicide car bombers from the road to one side and ducked sniper bullets believed to be coming from a nearby mosque from the other side, all joking and laughing as they waited for something, anything, to happen.

While the Iraqi Civil Defense troops mostly stayed home Wednesday or fled the area completely, at least 50 Iraqis did turn up to fight alongside the Marines on Wednesday.

Members of the special forces of the new Iraqi Army cleared buildings and checked on residents after insurgents attacked an apartment building with mortar rounds, apparently trying to reach nearby Marines.

While the troops lacked the discipline and training of the Marines and their U.S. Army Special Forces advisers, they got the job done and managed to get some valuable intelligence from the locals, including word that the fighting would escalate just before dark ---- which it did.

About 7:15 p.m., just as a strict curfew went into effect for the entire city, a huge explosion rocked a building where Marines were sneaking up on an Iraqi sniper.

In the hush, fireball

A massive fireball shot hundreds of feet into the air and black smoke rose over the city as flames engulfed surrounding buildings.

An Army Special Forces sniper watching from a nearby rooftop said it was a gasoline bomb set off by insurgents to kill Marines.

There was no word on additional casualties after nightfall Wednesday, when the fighting quieted to an eerie hush with occasional distant outbreaks. Fallujah seemed to be a giant in a fitful sleep.

While troops said that they were itching to launch a large-scale push into the city Wednesday, the commander of 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment said the troops would take their time to plan their move and allow residents to get out.

"There's an Arab saying that if you hurry, you could screw things up," said Lt. Col. Gregg Olson, who commands the Marines in the north.

"We don't want to do that," he said. "What we want to do is fight this on our own terms. And if that means taking our time, then that's what we're going to do."

Staff writer Darrin Mortenson and staff photographer Hayne Palmour are reporting from Iraq with Camp Pendleton Marines. Their coverage is collected at www.nctimes.com/military/iraq.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/200...26_564_7_04.txt

Ellie

[thedrifter]

New Iraqi special forces join struggle in Fallujah

By: DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff Writer

FALLUJAH, Iraq ---- When troops came banging on her door Wednesday, Fallujah resident Um Ahmad said she expected them to be some of the several hundred U.S. Marines who have been battling insurgents from a field near her government apartment building since Monday.

But when she opened the door, she was shocked to find an Iraqi face and hear an Arabic voice at her door instead.

Iraqi troops say her surprise has been a common reaction of Iraqi citizens to encounters with the newly formed Iraqi army special forces, who were first fielded in Baghdad in January and who made their debut Wednesday in Fallujah.


"They say, 'good!' " said Iraqi special forces soldier Mazin Fallah, 25, one of the nearly 60 Iraqi special operations troops who searched several apartment buildings room by room Wednesday after the troops were shelled with mortars.

"They say they are surprised but glad we are fighting," he said in the strained English he said he learned in college in Baghdad. "They say Iraq needs an Iraqi army, not more terrorists."

While the Iraqi troops sometimes confounded their U.S. Special Forces advisers who led them on Wednesday's operation, at least they showed up for the fight.

About 2,000 soldiers of the newly formed Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, who were paid by Marines last weekend, were supposed to help the 2,000-some Marines with a massive cordon of war-torn Fallujah this week.

But when heavy fighting erupted as the Marines arrived Monday near the city, all but about 20 of the Iraqi ICDC troops fled.

"It was a disappointment, yes," said Capt. Phil Cushman, the Camp Pendleton Marine "adviser" in charge of training, equipping and fielding the ICDC troops in Fallujah.

"They all sure showed up for payday," said Marine Pfc. Henry Johnson, 19, of Dallas.

Lance Cpl. Lucas Burton, 21, of Salem, Ore., said he, too, was disappointed and felt a bit betrayed by the ICDC desertion, but he said he was heartened by the apparent willingness to fight displayed by the Iraqi special forces troops.

"I'd rather have a few of these guys anyway," said Burton. He made the comment Wednesday before embarking on an operation into buildings near the edge of Fallujah, where he eventually joined a U.S. Special Forces sniper on a rooftop to help spot insurgents in nearby facing buildings.

The ragtag group of unshaven, AK-47-toting Iraqi commandos have been knocking down doors in Baghdad looking for insurgents since January, according to a U.S. Special Forces adviser who called himself "Greg."

"They're getting there," he said after some loud confusion over whether they were going to ask neighbors for a key to a door or break it down.

There was much yelling and arguing in Arabic as about 30 of the Iraqi troops made their way through the four-story building, where resident Ahmad and a dozen other women and children huddled in a lower apartment to avoid being hit with mortars that had been fired nearby.

No one seemed to be in charge, but in the end, the Iraqi troops seemed to make friends of the residents.

"People like us," said Abbas Khudhair, who added that while most of his comrades were from the Kurdish north, the force included members from all regions of the country, included Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and included most of the political parties represented in Iraq's new government.

Khudhair, 22, of the town of Hillah in the Babylon province, said his group was the future of Iraq.

"We work together for all Iraq," he said.

His comrade Fallah said the same, adding that all of Iraq needs them now in Fallujah more than ever.

"They kill Iraqis like they kill Americans," he said of the insurgents whose mortar fire had just rocked the apartment building where they searched for information about why most of the building's residents cleared out just minutes before the attack ---- as if they knew the mortar attack was coming.

"We will fight with the Americans to kill the terrorists," Fallah said.

Staff writer Darrin Mortenson and staff photographer Hayne Palmour are reporting from Iraq with Camp Pendleton Marines. Their coverage is collected at www.nctimes.com/military/iraq.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/200...28_054_7_04.txt

Ellie