Iraqi Resistance Report for Thursday, 11 December 2003 through
Sunday, 14 December 2003. Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu
Nasr, member editorial board of the Free Arab Voice.
Thursday, 11 December 2003.
One American occupation soldier was killed and 14 others wounded when
three martyrdom attackers driving a furniture truck blew themselves
up at the gates of a US occupation army base in ar-Ramadi, 100km west
of Baghdad, on Thursday.
All day Thursday the US military refused to provide information on
casualties resulting from the attack and only late in the evening
produced the official tally of one dead and 14 injured.
The three martyrdom attackers were also killed.
A spokeswoman for the occupation forces said that the Resistance
attack occurred at the 82nd Airborne Division base at about 1:30pm
Three wounded soldiers were evacuated from the headquarters of the
82nd Airborne Division west of Baghdad to a combat hospital and the
other 11 wounded were treated and returned to duty, the US occupation
forces reported.
Thursday, the American military reported one US occupation soldier
drowned and another was missing after a patrol boat accident on the
Tigris River in Baghdad. "The soldiers were conducting routine
patrols on the Tigris River when one of the soldiers fell overboard,
and the other soldier jumped in to save him," the US imperial Central
Command said in a statement. The incident occurred Wednesday, and
the drowned soldier from the Army's 1st Armored Division was found
Thursday morning, the statement said.
Agence France Presse reported that in Baghdad, two journalists from
the US weekly newsmagazine Time and two American soldiers were
wounded by a grenade explosion while on a military patrol in Baghdad,
a military spokesman revealed on Thursday. "They were participating
in a patrol in the 1/AD [i.e., 1st Armored Division] area in Baghdad
along with two other soldiers," he told a press briefing on
Thursday. "An individual threw a grenade into the Humvee." One of
the journalists was seriously hurt and the other slightly in the
A'zamiya area of north Baghdad at about 10:00 pm (1900 GMT) on
Wednesday, according to the spokesman. Both men were to be
transferred to a hospital in Germany.
Time senior correspondent Michael Weisskopf and contributing
photographer James Nachtwey were traveling with a US occupation army
patrol in Baghdad on Wednesday night when the attack occurred, a
statement from Time managing editor Jim Kelly said.
A military spokesman said they were with a unit of the Army's 1st
Armored Division.
In response to the rising tide of Resistance struggle, US occupation
forces staged raids and searches in the cities of al-Fallujah and
Tikrit. The occupiers meted out harsh treatment to local civilians
arresting dozens who were taken off to interrogation sessions. Women
and children were terrorized as the Americans fired automatic weapons
into the doors of houses to break them down, and then ransacked the
homes as helicopter gunships hovered menacingly overhead and
warplanes broke the sound barrier and fired missiles around the area
being raided in an effort to spread panic. Residents of al-Fallujah
were quoted by the Jordanian daily al-Arab al-Yawm as saying that the
behavior of the occupation forces was unbearable and unacceptable,
noting that the atmosphere in the city was now tense in the extreme.
One said that the situation in al-Fallujah is now like the calm
before a storm.
In Tikrit, occupation forces claimed to have arrested three
commanders in the Saddam's Fedayeen Resistance organization and to
have confiscated large quantities of weapons and explosives during a
campaign of raids and searches in the city where again the population
was terrorized and various forms of intimidation were employed by the
aggressor occupation forces against unarmed civilians including women
and children.
In Baaqubah US occupation forces together with puppet police raided a
number of buildings and arrested 16 men. Twenty-eight AK-47
Kalashnikov assault rifles were seized as well as what was described
as "bomb-making materials."
Shortly after these raids a hand grenade was thrown from one of the
houses wounding an American occupation soldier. After the attack the
aggressor troops returned and arrested two individuals.
Ghazi at-Talabani, director of the puppet Northern Field Protection
Force, which guards oil pipelines in northern Iraq on behalf of the
occupation forces, said an explosion set a pipeline ablaze, forcing
officials to halt the flow. He said the pipeline links the Bayji
refinery in northern Iraq with the ad-Dura refinery near Baghdad.
An official of the US occupation forces, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said a pipeline between Bayji and ad-Dura was sabotaged
late Tuesday or early Wednesday. It was unclear, the Associated Press
reported, whether the official was referring to the same incident.
Iraqi Resistance forces wounded two members of the Iraqi puppet so-
called Civil Defence Force Thursday in separate attacks in the
Baaqubah region, 60km northeast of Baghdad, an occupation security
source and one of the victims said.
Mohammed Shannan, 35, suffered bullet wounds in the stomach and leg
in a drive-by shooting at 8:00 am (0500 GMT) as he was leaving his
house, puppet police Lieutenant Shaker Mahmud said. The incident
occurred 20km west of Baaqubah, he added.
In Baaqubah itself, 'Uday Subhi told AFP he was wounded in the foot
when a grenade thrown by Resistance fighters exploded. The incident
followed search operations in which he took part in the Tahrir
residential quarter in the centre of town.
In Samarra', north of Baghdad, two members of the puppet so-called
Civil Defense Corps were shot and killed overnight while on patrol,
witnesses said Thursday.
The American newspaper The Washington Post reported on Thursday that
the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is working to set
up an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals
inside Iraq that are targeting US occupation troops and
collaborators. The paper quoted unidentified American officials as
saying that the CIA plans to set up the new service with help from
Jordan. Two members of an Iraqi exile group are at CIA headquarters
in Virginia this week to work out details of the new program, the
Post said.
The Washington Post story said that Iraqi puppet "Interior Minister"
Nouri Badran, whom it described as a secular Shiite Muslim, has been
selected to be the initial head of the service. Badran has
collaborated with the CIA over the past decade to incite coups
against the Iraqi government of President Saddam Hussein. Badran and
fellow Iraqi exile Ayad Alawi hope to recruit former officials of the
Saddam Hussein regime for the service, an approach opposed by some
Pentagon officials and Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National
Congress, the Post said.
As the Iraqi Resistance Report noted among the events of Wednesday,
10 December 2003, one US Apache helicopter was shot down by the Iraqi
Resistance near Mosul. The Associated Press on Thursday published
reports that shed light on how the occupation military seek to cover
up their loses in Iraq by labeling them as "accidents"
and "malfunctions."
Although, as the Iraqi Resistance Report noted, an eyewitness told
the Jordanian paper al-Arab al-Yawm that the helicopter was brought
down by a missile, the AP reported that initially an
American "military spokesman had insisted that the helicopter was
forced to crash land Wednesday because of mechanical failure and that
the uninjured crew reported no ground fire. But a commander later
said that he didn't know whether ground fire brought down the 101st
Airborne Division helicopter. The Apache came down near a highway
south of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city. Troops guarding the site
Thursday morning said the chopper had been hit by enemy fire. They
asked not to be identified." (See AP report:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&cid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20031211/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_953)
Sources: al-Arab al-Yawm daily newspaper, Amman, Jordan, Friday, 12
December 2003.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
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e_cia_dc_4
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44
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
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Friday, 12 December 2003.
The Iraqi Resistance fired a salvo of mortar shells at the
headquarters of the occupation troops shortly after midnight on
Friday morning in the first attack against the US occupiers' seat of
power since the Americans mounted a massive counteroffensive against
the Resistance last month.
Loud explosions boomed through central Baghdad and sirens wailed in
the compound housing the headquarters of the US-led occupation
forces. Smoke rose inside the compound, known as the "Green Zone." A
spokeswoman for the occupation forces, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said US officials were aware of explosions but did not
know the location.
A spokesman for the occupation forces said he heard three
explosions. "I heard what appeared to be incoming mortar rounds,"
Charles Krohn, a U.S. defense spokesman, said by telephone from his
room inside the Green Zone. "I was shaken and I heard a couple of
thumps. I felt the vibrations." The Green Zone is surrounded by 2-
meter high concrete walls.
Residents in the city reported hearing four explosions and saw at
least two columns of smoke rising from near the building of the
American command on the west bank of the Tigris River. News agencies
reported that four mortar rounds landed on the headquarters causing
damage to some of the buildings. Two American occupation troops were
wounded by shrapnel from the mortar shells according to a statement
by one US military spokesperson. A military spokeswoman maintained
however that the injuries were slight and none was life threatening.
Iraqi Resistance fighters detonated a bomb alongside a US military
occupation convoy west of Baghdad on Friday, killing one soldier and
wounding two others, the military said. The bomb attack occurred at
6:30 a.m. in ar-Ramadi, about 60 miles west of the Iraqi capital, the
US imperial Central Command said. One of the injured soldiers was
evacuated to a combat hospital and died of his wounds. His name, and
the names of the wounded, were withheld pending notification of next
of kin.
Separately, another soldier died in Baghdad from what was described
as a "non-hostile" gunshot wound.
Two Polish occupation troops were wounded on Friday in an explosion
on the road to al-Hillah, a few kilometers north of the city. The
vehicle in which they were traveling was destroyed. A second bomb
exploded a few hours later and a few kilometers away, but according
to an occupation spokesman, that blast which detonated between two
Polish military vehicles only inflicted damaged on the vehicles.
The bomb, reportedly made from a land mine, exploded on the outskirts
of the city of Mahawil as a 19-person Polish convoy drove by on
Friday. Warrant Officer Tomasz Kloc was seriously wounded in the
stomach and was evacuated to Baghdad. Sergeant Boguslaw Wasik
suffered less severe injuries and received treatment at the scene
according to Polish Major General Andrzej Tyszkiewicz who spoke to
Poland's TVN24.
One Iraqi puppet policeman was killed and another injured, as were
two civilians, when an explosive device detonated on the road to al-
Haswah, south of Baghdad. It appears that the blast was aimed at an
American military patrol, as there was a US convoy 200 meters from
the scene of the explosion. An Iraqi puppet policeman, Bashshar
Karim Khalaf told Agence France Presse (AFP) that the blast occurred
on a route regularly used by the US occupation forces.
In the village of Bayiji, near Kirkuk, an official in the puppet
police announced that the occupation forces on Friday disarmed four
bombs just one kilometer from an American military base in the area.
A witness reported to the AFP that one man was arrested on Friday
while trying to plant a bomb at al-Musawi Shiite mosque in a busy
section of central Baghdad. The mosque guard who asked not to be
identified said that two men who accompanied the man who tried to
plant the bomb managed to escape.
Meanwhile Sunni and Shiite religious leaders in their sermons on
Friday tried to head off sectarian violence that had become more
significant lately with a number of attacks on Sunni or Shiite
mosques in the country, following a more open US interest in the
prospect of partitioning the country along religious and ethnic
lines. The religious leaders called on their followers to use
restraint and accused the occupation forces of being behind the
exacerbation of violence among Muslims and of encouraging sectarian,
extremist, and hostile attitudes. Sunni and Shiite religious leaders
also held a meeting on Friday to discuss ways to halt the worsening
sectarian situation.
Sources: al-Arab al-Yawm daily newspaper, Amman, Jordan, Saturday 13
December 2003.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
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Saturday, 13 December 2003.
Islam Memo reports that the information media carry a story that an
American armored vehicle was destroyed Saturday when an American
occupation patrol came under attack by the Iraqi Resistance who used
rocket-propelled grenades in the as-Sabhani area of the Iraqi city of
al-Hadithah.
The sources told the Saudi News Agency WAS that US occupation forces
evacuated their wounded from the attack, and that a number of Iraqi
citizens kept pieces of the destroyed armored vehicle as trophies.
Meanwhile, members of an Iraqi family suffered wounds and broken
bones when their car was smashed by an American occupation tank on
the main highway leading to the city of al-Hadithah.
US occupation forces claim to have shot and killed an Iraqi youth
late on Saturday night after he shot at the Americans from a speeding
car. A second individual, the driver of the car, said that neither
of them had shot at the Americans but were firing an AK-47
Kalashnikov assault rifle into the air as part of a celebration of a
wedding.
The occupation troops told journalists who arrived on the scene
before the Americans imposed a curfew in the area that the deceased
was a young man in his early twenties and that he was struck by four
bullets in the head.
An Iraqi puppet policeman, charged with enforcing the rationing of
gasoline as decreed by the puppet Iraqi oil ministry, opened fire
Saturday on a taxi cab driver in Baaqubah, hitting him in the head
according to the victim, Salman Najras. The incident occurred in
front of a gasoline station when the driver was arguing with one of
the gasoline sellers about the black-market price of a can of
gasoline. At that point the puppet policeman approached and found
the argument to be "suspicious." Seeing the puppet policeman
approaching, Salman Najras immediately took off in his taxi, at which
point the puppet policeman fired at him, wounding him in the head.
Najras said that he would undergo surgery on Monday for the removal
of the bullet.
Puppet police lieutenant Haydar Ahmad told journalists that he had
not received any instructions about opening fire on those who disobey.
Iraqi puppet authorities decided on Wednesday to begin a campaign
against the sale of gasoline on the black market in order to try to
reduce the shortfall in supply of petroleum products.
In Tblisi, capital of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, the
American ambassador, Richard Miles announced that the new government
of Georgia would be sending 500 additional soldiers to Iraq at the
beginning of summer to join the special unit of forces that now
numbers 70 members and includes medical doctors and mine removal
specialists.
The American ambassador told a group of Georgian military personnel
who had just completed a course of training with American military
advisers that 200 Georgian soldiers would soon be going to Iraq while
the remainder would head there at the beginning of summer.
At present the Tblisi government pays between US$400 and US$600 as a
monthly salary to the soldiers currently stationed in occupied Iraq,
while the United States picks up the tab for the cost of uniforms,
supplies and expenses of the Georgian soldiers.
Presumably it is this financial arrangement – together with the
dependent state of the Georgian regime – that led to the surreal
situation in which Georgian military men were informed of their
intended deployments abroad, not by their Georgian commanders nor by
representatives of their Georgian government, but by the American
ambassador, who evidently has more information and outranks the local
military and civilian officials.
Sources: al-Arab al-Yawm daily newspaper, Amman, Jordan, Sunday, 14
December 2003.
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDnews=19815
Sunday, 14 December 2003.
Al-Jazeera TV has reported that Baghdad was shaken by three
explosions on Sunday. A puppet police source said that one of the
blasts was not the result of explosives, but of a truck loaded with
barrels of fuel that came under gunfire.
Al-Jazeera's correspondent reports that the explosions occurred when
a fuel truck was fired upon in the al-Karradah neighborhood near the
al-'Alwiyah exchange. Witnesses said that an explosives-laden car
exploded Sunday evening in front of the Palestine Hotel in the center
of the occupied Iraqi capital. The US occupation forces released no
information regarding casualties in the attacks.
Also following the announcement of the capture of Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein, anti-imperialist Resistance fighters in US-occupied
Kuwait ambushed two American military convoys, leaving several of the
aggressor troops wounded.
An occupation spokesman said that one American occupation soldier was
killed when an explosive device went off as he was trying to disarm
it. This occurred just hours after Washington confirmed claims that
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had been taken prisoner.
An Iraqi Resistance martyrdom bomber apparently detonated explosives
in a car outside a puppet police station Sunday morning in al-
Khalidiyah, 80km west of Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and
wounding 33 more, the US occupation forces said.
Al-Jazeera reported that witnesses said that ambulances rushed to the
scene to evacuate vicims to ar-Ramadi Hospital, 100km west of Baghdad.
Although no American occupation forces were reportedly hurt in the
attack, US aggressor forces rushed to the scene and imposed a
military cordon around the area. Occupation helicopters were seen
hovering overhead in the air.
A statement by al-Jama'ah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Group) in Iraq
reports that 45 of the supporters of the Kurdish Islamist group were
arrested by occupation authorities in Baghdad on Tuesday evening.
Four of those arrested were members of the Group's leading Council
(Shura) who were in Baghdad intending to meet the current head of the
puppet so-called Interim Governing Council 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Hakim.
The statement also said that among those arrested were male and
female students using the headquarters as a temporary residence while
they looked for regular housing to rent.
Desperate for some "good news" in their floundering war against the
Iraqi people and the rising tide of Iraqi Resistance, the US
occupation forces announced on Sunday that they had captured Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein. Reports by the occupation forces in the
past about capturing and killing Iraqi leaders have been unreliable,
but even assuming this report to be accurate, it changes nothing as
regards the objective situation of imperialist-Zionist occupation of
Iraq and the Iraqi people's resistance to it. So long as the
occupation continues, the resistance will grow.
Al-Arab al-Yawm daily newspaper in Amman reported that media reports
indicated that one of the Iraqis captured a few days ago by US
aggressor forces in al-Huwayjah gave out, in the course of
interrogation, information that helped the occupation troops capture
the Iraqi President. Other reports said that it was one of Saddam
Hussein's relatives who, while undergoing interrogation, gave
information to the occupation forces on the Iraqi President's
whereabouts. According to this report, the aggressor troops
bargained with the relative, promising that he could stay alive and
that he would be transported out of Iraq in return for enabling the
Americans to get to where the Iraqi President was.
A select American aggressor force of 600 troops encircled an isolated
farm in the town of ad-Duwar near Tikrit and after a search of the
area the occupation troops found the Iraqi President in an
underground hiding place. US imperialist sources indicated that the
so-called Task Force 121, which has recently reportedly received
training from the Zionist occupation regime in Palestine, was a part
of the elite force that captured the Iraqi President. One of the
planners of the operations in which Task Force 121 has been involved
is American Lieutenant General William "Jerry" Boykin, an individual
who gained some notoriety for identifying Muslims with Satan in
public meetings with American church groups. (For information on
Task Force 121, see the British Guardian newspaper for 9 December
2003: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1102940,00.html)
News reports also say that Kurdish chauvinist Peshmergah militiamen
aided the American aggressors in carrying out the operation to trap
the Iraqi President. It was therefore Jalal at-Talibani, head of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the leading Kurdish chauvinist
collaborationist organizations, who rushed to announce the capture of
Saddam Hussein, and it was the Iranian news agency that first carried
the story.
Press reports also said that when four members of the US-appointed
puppet so-called "Interim Governing Council" were led in to identify
the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein told them that he had been "a
just but firm ruler at the same time," and that he was not sorry
about what he had done.
The American monopoly CBS News reported that its correspondent in
Tikrit had learned from US military sources that the Iraqi President
was no longer in Iraq. US occupation commander General Ricardo
Sanchez announced that Saddam Hussein had been taken to a "secure
place."
A source in the American-appointed puppet police forece in Kirkuk
reported that four Iraqis were killed and more than 60 wounded, 10 of
them severely, when traitors in that northern city fired weapons into
the air in celebration of the fact that invading aggressor troops had
captured the Iraqi President. The puppet police spokesman said that
the injured victims are receiving treatment in Kirkuk hospitals.
The puppet police spokesman said that fights also broke out in the
city when "a group attacked a number of Kurds who were celebrating
the arrest in their own special way, demanding that they stop their
celebration immediately." The puppet police spokesman said that the
number of dead and injured from such "celebration" was likely to
increase because in addition to small arms, the
traitorous "celebrants" were also firing off rocket-propelled
grenades and heavy weapons.
Demonstrators in Kirkuk took to the streets to demand the release of
the head of a tribe who was arrested by occupation forces in mid-
November on suspicion that he had provided a refuge for the Iraqi
Vice President 'Izzat Ibrahim.
The dean of the al-Huwayjah Province Technical Institute said that US
occupation forces arrested 11 individuals on the campus early Sunday
morning. Dean Mahjub YaSin Muhammad told Agence France Presse (AFP)
that an American force of more than 30 soldiers "raided our Technical
Institute and arrested 11 persons about whom they had suspicions.
Among those arrested are nine guards and two of the Institute's
students." Dean Muhammad said "this operation is a dangerous
precedent. How can you arrest students on a university campus?"
Meanwhile, the Polish Defense Minister, whose forces are serving the
American occupation troops in occupied Iraq as a part of the so-
called multinational forces reported that those multinational forces –
which are under Polish command – raised the level of alert for their
troops in anticipation of an escalation in Resistance attacks after
the capture of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The Polish
minister said that there are fears of "reactions based on hate" that
might target the occupation forces.
Sources: al-Arab al-Yawm daily newspaper, Amman, Jordan, Monday 15
December 2003.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/iraq_saddam
http://www.aljazeera.net/news/arabic/2003/12/12-14-10.htm
http://www.aljazeera.net/news/arabic/2003/12/12-14-21.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1102940,00.html
