The US Army said the offensive in Tikrit — which included the first use of warplanes dropping bombs since major combat was declared over on May 1 — was a “show of force” designed to destroy possible hiding places for insurgents.
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a news conference in Baghdad that Iraq was still a “war zone”.
“We are involved in an insurgency, and that’s pretty close to war,” Armitage said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, fearful for the safety of its staff operating in Iraq, announced it was temporarily shutting its offices in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra. In a new attack by insurgents in the volatile town of Falluja, west of Baghdad, two US soldiers were killed and one wounded when a roadside bomb was detonated near their convoy.
Meanwhile, the US military said it had captured one of Saddam’s former bodyguards near Kirkuk and troops captured 12 people suspected of involvement in a deadly attack on a Baghdad hotel where US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying.
Brigadier-General Martin Dempsey, commander of the US Army’s First Armoured Division, said the suspects appeared to have links to the former regime of ousted president Saddam Hussein. Attackers fired rockets on Oct 26 into the Rasheed hotel, located inside the compound of Iraq’s US-led administration, killing a US military officer and wounding 15 other people.
Since May 1, 149 US soldiers have been killed in action, including the six killed in Friday’s downing of the Black Hawk.
HELICOPTER SHOT DOWN: Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Russell of the 4th Infantry Division based in Tikrit, 175 kilometres north of Baghdad, confirmed the Black Hawk had been brought down by guerillas.
“We do believe it was brought down by ground fire,” he said. The US Army said it was not clear what had hit the Black Hawk but that surface-to-air missiles had been ruled out.
It was the third US helicopter to be shot down in the last two weeks. Last Sunday a Chinook was downed west of Baghdad, killing 16 soldiers. The US response was swift.
After dark on Friday, F-16 fighter-bombers swooped over Tikrit, dropping 500-pound bombs near the crash site. Then raids were launched around the town — a hotbed of anti-US attacks.
Troops backed by armour and attack helicopters destroyed several abandoned houses which the US military believed had been used by insurgents.
A US Army statement said the raids were part of “Operation Ivy Cyclone,” a new drive to root out guerillas around Tikrit. It said 16 people had been detained in the past 24 hours as part of the operation, and five killed.
Three were shot dead after US troops moved in on a position where Iraqis had been firing rockets, one was killed in a gunbattle near the town of Balad, and one Iraqi was also killed after he fired on troops who caught him trying to string a decapitation wire across a road, the Army said.
The US military also said it had seized a large cache of mortars and rocket-propelled grenades hidden in a tomb in Samarra, which lies between Baghdad and Tikrit.—Reuters