Iraqi rebel attacks cut into calm(8 attt. in W.Iq/ 24 hrs ending Fr night)

[expatriot]

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0802iraq-rdp02.html

Iraqi rebel attacks cut into calm

Anthony Shadid
Washington Post
Aug. 2, 2003 12:00 AM


RAMADI, Iraq - With a mix of rocket-propelled grenades, mines and ambushes, guerrillas launched at least eight attacks against U.S. forces in western Iraq over a 24-hour period that ended Friday, breaking a relative calm in towns along the Euphrates River and fueling suspicions that Islamic militants, including foreigners, were involved, U.S. officials and residents said.

At least four assailants were killed and three U.S. soldiers wounded in the attacks, which began Thursday night and lasted into the late morning, said Sgt. Keith O'Donnell, a military spokesman. U.S. officials were surprised by their intensity, he said, and were trying to determine whether they were coordinated. Until Friday, attacks had averaged three or four a week, he said.

"To the best of my knowledge, that's been the most in a 24-hour period that I'm aware of," said O'Donnell, a public affairs officer for the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which patrols western Iraq. ."

In recent weeks, the U.S. military has focused its operations on Sunni Muslim towns along the Tigris River north of Baghdad, where soldiers have fought a low-intensity guerrilla war and carried out an intense search for former President Saddam Hussein, who was toppled on April 9. Elements of the Army's 4th Infantry Division conducted more raids Friday in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown.

On a darkened side street in the southern part of the city, soldiers with the division's 1st Battalion searched the house of a suspected midlevel Baath Party member, where they uncovered photographs of the man's relatives taken in one of Saddam's presidential palaces. After being briefly questioned about the photos, the man was blindfolded, bound and taken away in the back of the truck.

Col. James Hickey, the brigade's commander, said the daily raids are aimed less at Saddam than at resistance fighters, former Baath Party members and other remnants of his government.

An audio tape attributed to Saddam was released Friday by the Arab television network Al-Jazeera in which the speaker promised to take power again and return Iraq "to its normal state."

"Our faith is great that God will support us and that one day the occupation army will falter and that victory is possible at any moment in the future as a result of the painful strikes of the mujahideen and our people's insistence to stop the invaders," said the voice, which resembled that of the former Iraqi president.

[teryang]

1. Calm?

Is that what they call it now? Where did they come up with 4 attacks a day? Wasn't it 14 attacks a day? Isn't that what General Franks said? Isn't that what Centcom has been reporting?

[teryang]

2. More on "Calm."

Let's see, 20 KIA since July 18. That's calm?

<July 11, 2003
Worse Than We Thought

American occupation forces in Iraq are the subject of between ten and twenty-five attacks by insurgents per day according to General Tommy Franks, as Reuters reports. "On a given day, there will be somewhere between ten and twenty-five violent incidents" in Iraq, Franks told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday.>

http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:oeVrAf00330J:www.warblogging.com/archives/000682.php+guerilla+war+Iraq+daily+incidents&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Iraqis celebrate rocket attack on troops
By David Blair in Baghdad
(Filed: 04/07/2003)


<Gen Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, said that the number of shooting incidents was running at 13 a day.>

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/07/04/wirq104.xml/