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US air strikes, snipers kill 13 in Iraq battle | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Sheikh Abdel Sattar Abu Risha, founder of al-Anbar Awakening, arrives for a meeting with tribal leaders of Iraq’s Anbar province in the provincial capital of Ramadi, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, Aug. 16, 2007 (AP)


Sheikh Abdel Sattar Abu Risha, founder of al-Anbar Awakening, arrives for a meeting with tribal leaders of Iraq's Anbar province in the provincial capital of Ramadi, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, Aug. 16, 2007 (AP)

Sheikh Abdel Sattar Abu Risha, founder of al-Anbar Awakening, arrives for a meeting with tribal leaders of Iraq’s Anbar province in the provincial capital of Ramadi, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, Aug. 16, 2007 (AP)

BAGHDAD, (Reuters) – U.S. aircraft and army snipers killed 13 gunmen north of Baghdad on Friday in fierce fighting that erupted as troops closed in to capture an al Qaeda cell leader, the U.S. military said.

The U.S. military this week announced the launch of a major new offensive targeting al Qaeda and Shi’ite militias, who they fear will step up attacks ahead of a key report on the Iraq war due to be presented to the U.S. Congress in September.

It launched an operation east of the town of Tarmiya on Friday targeting an al Qaeda leader “who provides guidance to senior terrorist leaders”.

After being shot at from several buildings, troops had called in air strikes that forced out four gunmen, including a woman wearing a ski mask, who were then killed by aircraft and sniper fire, the U.S. military said. Nine more gunmen were killed during the fighting.

“Despite coalition forces’ appeals for the terrorists to send out women and children to be taken to safety, a boy was killed in a building with an armed terrorist who had engaged the ground forces,” a military statement said.

A day earlier U.S. forces in Tarmiya attacked a Sunni mosque in the town after machinegun and rocket-propelled grenade fire on their combat outpost killed one soldier. More than 3,700 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

U.S. President George W. Bush has sent an extra 30,000 troops to Iraq to help clamp down sectarian violence between Shi’ite Muslims and Sunni Arabs and buy Iraq’s divided leaders time to reach a political accommodation.

Moderate Kurdish and Shi’ite blocs formed a new alliance on Thursday to support Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government in an attempt to break a political deadlock that has paralysed decision-making and talled agreement on crucial legislation. But the alliance, which includes the two main Kurdish parties in the government, the powerful Shi’ite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Maliki’s Shi’ite Dawa party, does not include the biggest Sunni Arab party, the Iraqi Islamic Party.

The party is part of the Accordance Front, the Sunni Arab political bloc that withdrew from the government earlier this month in protest at Maliki’s failure to address any of their demands for a greater say in government.

In a statement on Friday, the Iraqi Islamic Party said the solution to Iraq’s political crisis was not through making new alliances “but by achieving national consensus on the issues still dividing Iraqis”.

Those deep divisions have sparked violence that has killed tens of thousands, forced 2 million people to flee the country and displaced hundreds of thousands more internally.

Suicide truck bombers on Tuesday levelled scores of houses in two villages in northwestern Iraq that were home to members of the country’s minority Yazidi sect in a devastating attack that stunned even war-weary Iraqis.

Two days after the attack, with the cleanup of the bomb-flattened houses still continuing, there was still no definite death toll. Iraqi and U.S. officials gave widely differing figures. Even taking the lowest estimate, however, would make it the worst attack in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The spokesman for U.S. troops in northern Iraq, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Donnelly, said U.S. soldiers at the scene put the death toll at 212, with hundreds displaced. “The numbers will not be settled for days, if not weeks. But numbers are not the important thing. The important thing is that we get the Yazidis back on their feet and show some solidarity,” he said, adding that the military was shipping food, water and blankets to the area.

The governor of Nineveh province, Duraid Kashmoula, put the death toll at about 200. “We don’t have a final death toll but many are still missing,” he told Reuters.

The health minister of neighbouring Kurdistan, Zairyan Othman, said 250 people had been killed and 250 wounded. Dr Kifah Mohammed, head of Sinjar hospital, said 344 had died.

A U.S. Army soldier from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division is reflected in a puddle in the Amariyah neighborhood, west Baghdad, Iraq, Aug. 16, 2007 (AP)

A U.S. Army soldier from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division is reflected in a puddle in the Amariyah neighborhood, west Baghdad, Iraq, Aug. 16, 2007 (AP)

Iraqi policemen patrol in a street at central Baghdad, 17 August 2007 (AFP)

Iraqi policemen patrol in a street at central Baghdad, 17 August 2007 (AFP)