Iraq war has not ended, says US: More troops planned to tackle unrest
BAGHDAD, May 29: The top coalition commander in Iraq said on Thursday he was mulling sending extra troops to western Iraq to tackle what he described as a continuing “war” against “regime holdouts”.
“We are looking at all options to include sending additional combat power there,” said Lt-Gen David McKiernan, the head of coalition ground forces, after the spate of deadly attacks which have targeted US troops west of Baghdad in recent days.
McKiernan said he could not give any separate figures for coalition losses since the entry of US troops into Baghdad on April 9, insisting that his troops remained at war.
“The war has not ended,” he said. “Decisive combat operations against military formations have ended. These operations happened in a combat zone and it is war.”
The US commander denied that the flareup of hit-and-run attacks against US troops in recent days marked a new nationalist resistance to the seven-week-old occupation.
“I don’t think that there is a new movement in Iraq that is anti-coalition,” he said.
“I see it being orchestrated by enemies whose future has gone. They were part of Saddam Hussein’s regime, they were tied to him ... They and the Iraqi people know that they have no future.”
The US commander said he could not comment on why US troops had been targeted in the Sunni Muslim towns of Fallujah, Ramadi and Hit, rather than the Shia south.
But he said there was strong evidence of the close connections between the area and Saddam’s Baath party.
“I can’t tell you who it is. But we know that this is an area which some of the regime leaders tried to make their way out of Baghdad to.
“I believe that our initial reports would indicate that there is a connection (with) Baathist holdouts in that area.
“We have apprehended in that area several Baathists in the last week and taken them into detention. This might be a reaction to that.”
Residents of Fallujah, where two US soldiers were killed in an ambush Tuesday, deny the attack was the work of Saddam loyalists, insisting it was a symptom of growing fury at a heavy-handed US occupation.
Tension has been on the boil in the town since late last month, when US troops shot dead at least 16 anti-US protesters.
McKiernan said he thought the attackers lacked any nationwide organization and were “orchestrated at the local level.”
He said the “regime holdouts” might include elements of the elite Special Republic Guard, the privileged and ultra-loyal close security force of Sadddam’s regime.
“There is probably a certain element of these who don’t want the coalition to succeed and who don’t want Iraqis to form a free, democratic government,” he said.
“They don’t have much of a future and they might be part of the elements that we’re encountering.”
TWO KILLED: US troops killed two Iraqi civilians and injured two others after their vehicle failed to stop at a checkpoint in a town north of Baghdad, the US military said on Thursday.
The incident took place late on Wednesday in Samarra, the scene of a shootout involving US forces on Monday in which the military said three Iraqi men may have been killed.
CINEMA HIT: A Baghdad cinema, which has been under pressure from religious groups to close down, was rocked by a grenade attack early Thursday, witnesses told AFP.
There was no damage to the cinema in the capital’s main commercial street from the attack, which they said happened just around sunrise. They said a pick-up truck and minibus drove by the theatre and that the grenade was thrown.—Agencies
