- BAGHDAD (IslamOnline.net
& News Agencies) - As the U.S. forces pursued for the third consecutive
day their get-tough tactics against Iraqi resistance fighters, a French
politician described on Tuesday, November 18, the U.S. army as "brutal",
saying that such more aggressive operations would do little to end mounting
anti-U.S. attacks.
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- "These are just the type of operations which encourage
people to think they are dealing with a brutal army of occupation,"
Francois Gere, director of France's Institute for Diplomacy and Defense,
told the BBC News Online.
-
- "These are operations of the 'search and destroy'
type which are very spectacular and designed primarily to occupy television
airtime for the U.S. public back home.
-
- "This is like using sledgehammers to swat flies.
This is not how you fight guerrillas," he added.
- Gere's statements came as Russian Foreign Minister Igor
Ivanov further criticized the "excessive" tendency of the United
States to use military force, saying that the level of violence in Iraq
showed Moscow was right to oppose the U.S.-led invasion.
-
- In recent days, U.S. commanders have taken off the gloves
in their battle with Iraqi fighters, resorting to air strikes, heavy artillery
against alleged resistance positions and satellite-guided missiles in their
newest offensive Operation Ivy Cyclone II.
- The harsher U.S. tactics came a day after 17 U.S. soldiers
were killed and five others wounded in a collision between two Black Hawk
helicopters.
-
- American warplanes and ground forces have bombarded targets
in central Iraq and three towns north of the capital - Tikrit, Baquba and
Samarra.
-
- Locals told IslamOnline.net that the U.S. forces launched
an extensive air, tank and artillery raid on areas in Baaquba, northeast
of Baghdad.
-
- The raids destroyed at least 5 houses and caused an unspecified
number of casualties among its citizens, according to an eyewitness.
-
- The U.S. forces used 155 mm heavy artillery in shelling
a number of districts in the town and shelled other areas with 500-pound
bombs.
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- "The Americans don't need to use such destructive
force to fight their enemies," an Iraqi citizen told IOL.
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- Show Of Strength
-
- On Tuesday night, the U.S.-led occupation called in air
support against targets in central Baghdad for the first time since its
spring invasion, deafening the capital with repeated salvoes of aerial
cannon fire in another show of strength.
-
- In one of a spate of barrages that punctured the evening
festivities that normally characterize the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan,
nearly 40 separate rounds were audible across the city as part of Operation
Iron Hammer, a massive military offensive launched in and around Baghdad
on November 12.
-
- A U.S. military spokesman said five separate locations
from which mortar or rocket attacks had been launched on the U.S. heavily
fortified compound were targeted in the evening's raids.
-
- "These targets were struck using an aerial platform
with 105 mm cannon fire and 40 mm gunfire," the spokesman said without
specifying whether the aircraft were fixed-wing or helicopters.
-
- Air support has been called in several times north and
west of the capital, but Tuesday's was only the second reported incidence
in Baghdad itself.
-
- Further north outside Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit,
U.S. forces pounded alleged resistance positions with mortar fire for a
third consecutive night late Tuesday.
-
- A platoon positioned itself in a dusty field outside
the town, to fire mortar rounds from atop armored personnel carriers, flanked
by combat tanks.
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- To boost the menacing effect of the display of firepower,
the mortars were launched two at a time in rapid succession, targeting
fields the military says had been used in attacks against occupation forces.
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- Flashes lit up the night sky and huge explosions rocked
the ground as the mortars hit their targets.
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- Since the launching of the Operation Ivy Cyclone II on
Sunday, the U.S. forces have fired two satellite-guided missiles, several
helicopter-launched Hellfire missiles, as well as mortar and tank rounds,
at safe houses, alleged training grounds and other positions they say are
used by former regime loyalists to attack them.
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