5,000 U.S. and Iraqi Troops Sweep Into City of Tall Afar

[Rose Siding]

It was a clear and quiet dusk, with only the call to prayer echoing from minarets across this city, when a roadside bomb blasted an M1-A1 Abrams tank, shaking nearby buildings and filling the indigo sky with a plume of black smoke.

Crackling small-arms fire clanged off the damaged vehicle from an adjacent house. U.S. soldiers answered with increasingly violent volleys -- .50-caliber machine gun bursts, tank rounds and a TOW missile -- but the shots from inside the house kept coming. Finally, an ear-splitting succession of five rounds from the tank's big gun reduced the building to flaming rubble and lit the empty streets with white sparks from exploding power transformers.

In the largest urban assault since the siege of Fallujah last November, more than 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops entered this northern city before dawn Friday. But the 45-minute firefight at day's end suggested that the insurgents who have controlled much of Tall Afar for almost a year would not relinquish it easily.

"We knew they were going to fight," said Pfc. Johnny Lara, a machine gunner from Blue Platoon, Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, who watched the clash with a reporter from a rooftop about 100 yards away. "Now it's a fight."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/02/AR2005090202250.html

[rsmith6621]

1. Wouldnt It Be Nice if

They were storming into NOLA

[bemildred]

2. This has been going on for a while now.

A good deal of air-support was/is being used.
It's hard to get good information on what is really at issue,
but it seems reasonable to think at this point that the "offensive"
is bogged down. The city is heavily Turkmen, and they are likely to
put up a fight. I don't really understand why the occupation wants
to pick this fight though, unless maybe it's about oil.

[bemildred]

4. Ah, it's a "logistical hub".

Set on an old smuggling trail that winds though pastoral plains about 40 miles from the Syrian border, Tall Afar is a key logistics hub for insurgents operating across northern Iraq, military officials say.

[leftchick]

9. well if the military officials say it is true

then we can be sure it is not. I wonder how many villages and citizens they have slaughtered? I wonder if we will ever know?

[acmavm]

3. "We knew they were going to fight." Gee golly, it's their country, it's

their homes, it's their lives that they're defending from an occupation force.

Yeah, I'd have guessed that they'd probably put up a fuss too.

[uppityperson]

5. I am ready to scream. eom

[daleo]

6. News about the Iraq war seems more surreal than usual.

It seems amazing that they are still bothering. They should give it up and go home. There won't be enough money to rebuild New Orleans and fight a pointless war.

[RedRocco]

8. what you want to bet

that at some point we start hearing about reduced rations for the troops because they had to feed the katrina victims?

[leftchick]

7. 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi Troops Sweep Into City of Tall Afar(Another Fallujah)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/02/AR2005090202250.html

Crackling small-arms fire clanged off the damaged vehicle from an adjacent house. U.S. soldiers answered with increasingly violent volleys -- .50-caliber machine gun bursts, tank rounds and a TOW missile -- but the shots from inside the house kept coming. Finally, an ear-splitting succession of five rounds from the tank's big gun reduced the building to flaming rubble and lit the empty streets with white sparks from exploding power transformers.

In the largest urban assault since the siege of Fallujah last November, more than 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops entered this northern city before dawn Friday. But the 45-minute firefight at day's end suggested that the insurgents who have controlled much of Tall Afar for almost a year would not relinquish it easily.

"We knew they were going to fight," said Pfc. Johnny Lara, a machine gunner from Blue Platoon, Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, who watched the clash with a reporter from a rooftop about 100 yards away. "Now it's a fight."

During the course of the day, at least 30 insurgents were killed as U.S. troops conducted house-to-house searches in the baking sun. Apache attack helicopters that circled the city of 250,000 all day killed 27 people, including eight who were attempting to conceal roadside bombs in old tires, commanders said. No American or Iraqi army casualties were reported.

[Sabriel]

10. Wasn't it the Germans who last tried to fight a war on two fronts? n/t