[Marinir] The Iraq war deaths raised to 2,045 U.S. service members

[Yap Hong Gie]

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/11/06/a2.int.war.1106.p1.php?section=
nation_world


U.S. launches offensive to stem foreign fighters
By Robert Reid
The Associated Press
Published: Sunday, November 6, 2005


BAGHDAD, Iraq - About 3,500 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers backed by jets launched
a major attack Saturday against an insurgent-held town near the Syrian
border, seeking to dislodge al-Qaeda and its allies and seal off a main
route for foreign fighters entering the country.

U.S. officials describe the town of Husaybah as the key to controlling the
volatile Euphrates River valley of western Iraq and dislodging al-Qaeda in
Iraq, led by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The U.S.-led operation includes about 1,000 Iraqi soldiers, and the
offensive will serve as a major test of their capability to battle the
insurgents - seen as essential to enabling Washington to draw down its
157,000-strong military presence.

Thunderous explosions shook Husaybah early Saturday as U.S. Marines and
Iraqi scouts, recruited from pro-government tribes from the area, fought
their way into western neighborhoods of the town, 200 miles northwest of
Baghdad, residents said.
As fighting continued throughout the day, U.S. jets launched at least nine
airstrikes, according to a U.S. Marine statement. The U.S. command said
there were no reports of casualties among American or Iraqi forces.

However, the military said Saturday that three more U.S. soldiers had been
killed elsewhere in Iraq.
One soldier was killed Friday by small-arms fire south of Baghdad, and
another died the same day when the vehicle in his patrol was hit by a mine
near Habaniyah, 50 miles west of the capital.
The third soldier was killed Saturday in a traffic accident in southern
Iraq.

Those deaths raised to at least 2,045 the number U.S. service members who
have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an
Associated Press count.

Also Saturday, five Iraqi police were killed and three were wounded when a
roadside bomb exploded in northern Baghdad, hospital officials said.
And 11 members of a Kurd-ish Shiite family - including an infant - were
killed and three wounded when gunmen sprayed their minibus with automatic
weapons' fire northeast of Baghdad, police said.

The relatives were returning to their home in the Baghdad area after
visiting a family cemetery near Balad Ruz, about 50 miles away. Shiite
Muslims traditionally pay their respects to their dead during the three-day
Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of Ramadan and ends for most
Shiites today.

The attack's motive was unclear, but tensions between Shiites and Sunnis
have been on the rise in the area, with extremists from each community
targeting the other.

Elsewhere, a 65-year-old male detainee died Saturday of natural causes at a
U.S. military prison camp, the U.S. military announced. Camp Bucca is
located near the southern port city of Umm Qasr near the Kuwaiti border.

U.S. commanders hope the Husaybah offensive, code-named ''Operation Steel
Curtain,'' will restore control of western Anbar province ahead of the
parliamentary election Dec. 15 and enable Sunni Arabs there to vote.
Husaybah, a poor Sunni Arab town of about 30,000 people, is the first stop
in a network of communities that the U.S. military suspects al-Qaeda of
using to smuggle fighters, weapons and explosives from Syria down the
Euphrates valley to Baghdad and other cities.
Many Husaybah residents are believed to have fled the town after weeks of
fighting between Iraqi tribes that support the insurgents and those that
back the government.