- BAGHDAD -- A correspondent
of Mafkarat al-Islam in the ar-Rashid area south of Baghdad reported that
detachment of about 50 Iraqi Resistance fighters - some of whom, witnesses
said, were Iraqi and some fraternal Arab volunteers from outside Iraq
- stormed the ar-Rashid camp used by the Americans as their headquarters
in the area, called "Kilizan."
-
- The Resistance fighters entered the camp by using bayonets
to kill three American guards and then cutting through the barbed wire
that surrounds the base. Inside, the Resistance fighters attacked three
regular Humvees and one armored Humvee, killing eight US troops who were
near the vehicles. The Resistance confiscated the four Humvees and drove
them out of the American camp, and from there out of the city, taking with
them all the weapons, technical equipment, military maps, and communications
gear that was in the vehicles.
-
- The correspondent wrote that as soon as the Americans
learned that the Resistance had infiltrated into their camp, killed their
personnel and commandeered four of their vehicles, they sent troops out
into the city to carry out a thorough search for the Resistance fighters.
-
- In his dispatch posted at 12:20pm Mecca time Friday afternoon,
the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent wrote that correspondents for Knight-Ridder,
the American Time magazine, and several Arab and international news agencies
worked in front of the American camp and the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent
was among them. But it was only the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent who
relayed the story based in part on sources in the Iraqi Resistance and
also on an interview with a member of the US military who did not deny
the story but refused to make any statement about it.
-
- The correspondent noted that the American camps in the
area were more tense than usual, however, each camp carrying out inspections
of other camps, trying to find out if the missing vehicles might be among
them. The correspondent wrote that the US soldiers and Marines in the
southern part of Baghdad for the last six hours had been in a state of
nervous doubt and mutual suspicion as a result of the break in.
-
- Witnesses resident in the ar-Rashid area said that they
saw the Resistance fighters rushing out of the city with the four captured
vehicles which were being driven by men whose faces were covered. A witness
said that the vehicles were indeed being driven by Resistance fighters
and that their driving was "somewhat bad."
-
- The correspondent called the Resistance operation the
boldest since the US occupation. He noted that the area to the south of
Baghdad is heavily over grown with thickets and with farmland and that
40 US spy planes and 30 helicopters at the time of reporting were crisscrossing
the skies above in search of the captured vehicles. It is believed that
a helicopter carrying a high-ranking US commander landed a short while
before inside the camp into which the Resistance was able to penetrate.
-
- "Friendly fire" nervous US soldiers kill four
US Marines in ar-Rashid area following Resistance break-in at American
base.
-
- Four American troops were killed by so-called "friendly
fire" in the ar-Rashid area of southern Baghdad at 4pm Friday afternoon
local time.
-
- The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported local
witnesses as saying that one Humvee was heading from the west of the city
towards the center at very high speed when a US column spotted the vehicle
as they came out from a side street and into the path of the racing Humvee.
Troops in the column opened very intense fire on the Humvee, in the belief
that the vehicle was one of those taken in a Resistance break in to the
ar-Rashid base Friday morning. The soldiers in the US column believed
that the speeding Humvee was one of the captured vehicles being used in
a martyrdom attack on themselves, hence their fierce response.
-
- Witnesses said that the incident left four American troops
dead and the Humvee destroyed. They said that after opening fire on the
Humvee, the Americans in the column then saw three more Humvees pull out
from a side street behind the first. They then realized that they had
shot up part of a US Marine patrol in the area.
-
- The correspondent received confirmation of the incident
from a member of the puppet police, who said that the seizure of the four
Humvees by the Resistance Friday morning had put the whole US army in Iraq
in a state of confusion.
-
- A member of the US-run Iraqi puppet army told Mafkarat
al-Islam that after the break in on the base, the base authorities had
begun checking the IDs of their troops when they enter the camp, stopping
all the armored and unarmored Humvees to search them, in fear that one
of them might be one of the vehicles commandeered by the Resistance coming
back on a mission of death.
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- http://www.freearabvoice.org/Iraq/Report/report226.htm
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