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OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOMMARCH 2003
Umm Qasr Liberated, But Now Under Siege By Looters
Source: Seattle Post - Intelligencer Publication date: 2003-03-28 Arrival time: 2003-03-29
Once a gateway to the world, Umm Qasr is poor, crumbling and in the middleof a war zone. And now the port city's factories are facing a new threat:aggressive looters."Please tell the coalition to protect the factories from looting," pleaded NajimAhd, a gray-haired teacher, pointing at plants nearby."People were stealing everything from those factories yesterday - even tablesand chairs, doors and windows. It's a kind of revenge against Saddam Hussein.He taught the people to steal, to lie, to kill and be killed." The coalition has declared that the stabilization of Umm Qasr is one of itshighest priorities. As the only deep-water port in Iraq, it is a strategicallyimportant entry point for military and humanitarian supplies.British troops announced Wednesday they were clamping down on looting, yetthere were obvious signs that it was continuing. One man rolled a barrel down aroad near the port while carrying a sack over his back. Two men were stealing asofa."There's been tons of looting," said a U.S. soldier who was guarding the town'sold port. "When they realized it was safe, they grabbed anything andeverything."He said he saw one man with a flatbed truck to haul looted furniture. Anotherlooter carried an entire sofa on his bicycle. Asked how the looter had managedthis trick, the soldier said: "Years of experience, I guess."While British troops patrolled the streets, ordinary Iraqis continued to gatheroutside the new foreign military compounds, begging for medicine, electricityrepairs and answers on the fate of missing people who might have beenarrested. Yet of dozens clamoring for help, only Ahd dared to support the war."You can't imagine the huge suffering we went through from this politicalregime," he said. "All of my friends - teachers, novelists - were suffering fromSaddam. Everything in Iraq is expensive, except death."
Iraq: Suicide Attacks Are Military Policy
Source: Associated PressPublication date: 2003-03-30 Arrival time: 2003-03-29
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OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOMMARCH 2003
A bomber posing as a taxi driver summoned American troops for help, thenblew up his vehicle Saturday, killing himself and four soldiers and opening anew chapter of carnage in the war for Iraq.An Iraqi official said such attacks would be "routine military policy" in Iraq -and, he suggested chillingly, in America."We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land and we will follow theenemy into its land," Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said at a Baghdadnews conference. "This is just the beginning. You'll hear more pleasant newslater."U.S. officials said the bombing occurred at about 10:40 a.m. at a U.S.checkpoint on the highway north of the holy city of Najaf.A taxi stopped close to the roadblock; the driver waved for help. When soldiersapproached the car, it exploded, Capt. Andrew Wallace told Associated Press Television News, killing the driver and four soldiers from the Army's 1st Brigade,3rd Infantry Division. The names of the Americans were not immediately released. But Ramadanidentified the bomber as Ali Jaafar al-Noamani, a noncommissioned army officerand father of several children.Iraq's state television reported that Saddam posthumously promoted al-Noamani to colonel, and bestowed on him two medals - Al-Rafidin, or The TwoRivers, and the Mother of All Battles."It's the blessed beginning," said the statement, alluding to the suicide attack."He wanted to teach the enemy a lesson in the manner used by our Palestinianbrothers."It claimed that 11 American soldiers were killed in the attack, two APCsdestroyed and two tanks damaged."After he kissed a copy of the Quran, he got into his booby-trapped car andwent to an area where enemy armored cars and tanks were gathered on thefringes of Najaf and turned his pure body and explosives-laden car into a rocketand blew himself up," the statement said.Ramadan said Iraq, like many other nations, cannot match American weaponry."They have bombs that can kill 500 people, but I am sure that the day willcome when a single martyrdom operation will kill 5,000 enemies." Thousands of Arab volunteers have been pouring into Iraq since the start of thewar, he said, adding that Iraq will provide them with what they need to fightthe allied forces."The Iraqi people have a legal right to deal with the enemy with any means,"he added.2
 
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOMMARCH 2003
 This was the first such attack since the invasion began. It was, said Maj. Gen.Gene Renuart of the U.S. Central Command, "a symbol of an organization that'sstarting to get a little bit desperate."At a Pentagon news conference Saturday, Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said suicide attacks would not change the way U.S.-ledforces proceed in the war, except that they would take more care in vulnerablelocations like checkpoints."We're very concerned about it. It looks and feels like terrorism," he said.Col. Will Grimsley, commander of the brigade that was hit, said force protectionremained the highest priority, "but that doesn't mean we're going to back intolittle holes and hide.""The local population that's here and happy that we're here - they tell us all thetime, they've been feeling the same kind of terrorist repression for years andnow unfortunately it's hit American soldiers. I think it only tightens the resolveof why we're here." The 3rd Infantry Division is based at Fort Stewart, near Hinesville, Ga., andnews of the attack hit the town hard."It's not the deaths, it's the way it was done," said Ellen Seider, a local printshop owner who spent Friday night helping Army wives stamp out buttonsprinted with photos of their husbands."There are bad people, there are mean people and there are evil people," shesaid. "And Saddam Hussein is pure evil." The attack did not come without warning.Iraqi dissidents and Arab media have claimed that Saddam has opened atraining camp for Arab volunteers willing to carry out similar bombings againstU.S. forces in Iraq.Al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden also urged Iraqis in an audio tape onArabic television last month to employ the tactic, used frequently by Palestinianmilitants against Israeli soldiers and civilians. Though the Iraqis said the bomber was an Army officer, Lt. Col. Ahmed Radhi,an exiled Iraqi officer in Cairo, Egypt and former commander of an armybrigade, said he did not believe it. The claim, Radhi said, was "a stupid methodto raise morale among the army."If a soldier was involved, Radhi insisted, he either did not know his car carried abomb or was acting under duress.In 1970, Saddam sent a group of security officers with a booby-trapped car tokill Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani, father of Massoud Barzani, current chief of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The car exploded prematurely, killing thesecurity officers while Mustafa Barzani survived. The biggest suicide attack against the U.S. military abroad was in Lebanon,when a truck packed with explosives drove into a U.S. Marine base in Beirutand exploded in the early morning of Oct. 23, 1983, as the troops slept. Theattack killed 241 American servicemen and leveled the base. A simultaneoussuicide attack on a Beirut base for French soldiers killed 58 paratroopers.3
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