HUSAYBA, Iraq,
Nov. 5 - Thousands of American and Iraqi troops laid siege on Saturday
to this town near the Syrian border in one of the largest military
assaults since American-led forces stormed the guerrilla stronghold of
Falluja last year, Marine Corps officials said.
The sweep, aimed at shutting down the flow of foreign fighters along
the Euphrates River, began early Saturday as 2,500 American troops and
1,000 Iraqi Army soldiers, all led by the Marines, cordoned off roads
around Husayba before rolling into town in armored vehicles and
marching in on foot.
Insurgents armed with Kalashnikovs opened fire down alleyways and
from windows. Fighter jets streaked overhead, dropping 500-pound bombs.
Explosions resounded throughout the day as the invading troops advanced
house by house, searching each one.
By nightfall, the American-led forces had taken only several blocks
in the town's western half and still had more than a mile to go before
reaching the eastern edge. At least two Americans were wounded in
combat. Marines began making camp in seized houses, while sporadic
gunfire and mortar explosions could be heard in the streets.
American commanders say Husayba has become a bastion for cells of Al
Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the group led by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi that claims credit for many of the deadliest suicide
bombings of the war.
Husayba is one of the first and most vital stops for foreign
jihadists who enter Iraq through a series of desert towns along the
Euphrates River corridor, the commanders say.
The marines responsible for securing that vast desert region in
Anbar Province have conducted a dozen or so operations along the
corridor since spring, with mixed success.
The Saturday offensive was the most ambitious of those, partly
because the American military seems intent on minimizing any chance
that insurgents disrupt the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, the final
stage in the process of establishing a full-term sovereign government.
"It's a cesspool; it's time for this area to get cleaned up," Col.
Stephen W. Davis, of the Second Marine Division, said of Husayba.
"Foreign fighters are the most virulent threat."
The operation is also a crucial test for the Iraqi security forces.
This is the first time that multiple battalions of Iraqi Army soldiers
have been deployed in combat, though they are still backed by the
Americans, said Capt. Jeffrey Pool, a spokesman for the Second Marine
Division.
In recent months, American officers have been saying it will be
years before the Iraqi Army is able to operate on its own; in
September, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in
Iraq, told the United States Senate that only one Iraqi battalion at
that time was able to fight fully independent of American forces.
President Bush has said a significant drawdown of the 160,000 American
troops here will not take place until the Iraqis are capable of
providing some security for their own country.
American commanders say foreign fighters make up a small part of the
insurgency, but are instrumental in some of the most devastating
attacks, particularly the ones involving deadly suicide car bombs that
often kill dozens of Iraqis.
The Bush administration has increasingly expressed frustration at
what it calls the inability of the Syrian government to stem the flow
of fighters from its territory, though the Syrians say the border is
too long and porous to control. While marines have been carrying out
their offensives along the Euphrates, elite commando units have been
deployed to other areas near Syria.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the American command, said at
a recent news conference that "the majority" of foreign fighters in
Iraq were coming across from Syria.
American operations in Anbar, he
added, are intended to break up the transit routes for both jihadists
and munitions, and to capture or kill the leaders of the various Qaeda
cells.
"We're convinced that decimating their leadership has a significant effect on their operations," the general said.
Anbar Province, which is dominated by Sunni Arabs, has proved to be
the most intractable swath of Iraq. Violence throughout the region and
hatred of both the Americans and the Shiite-led Iraqi government
dampened turnout there during a referendum last month on the nation's
new constitution.
The American military said Saturday that a marine had been killed
Friday after his vehicle hit a mine near the town of Habbaniya.
Elsewhere in Iraq, near the town of Tallil, an American serviceman was
killed and three were injured Saturday in a vehicle accident, the
military said.
In Baghdad, a prominent Sunni Arab politician, Fakhri al-Qaisi, was
seriously wounded when four gunmen opened fire on his car at 5 p.m.,
hitting him in the chest and a hand, said Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, one of
Mr. Qaisi's political allies. Mr. Qaisi, a conservative dentist, had
planned to run in the December elections as part of a hard-line Sunni
Arab bloc.
In past interviews, he said he rarely slept at home because of a
fear of assassination; he often spent the night in his car in various
parts of Baghdad, he said.
"We were all shocked," said Mr. Mashhadani, speaking by telephone.
"I feel this is just the beginning of assassination operations against
the candidates."
In previous conversations, Mr. Qaisi did not say who might want to
kill him, but he had harsh words for the Shiite religious parties that
now control the transitional government. He was especially angry with
the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an
Iranian-backed party led by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim that is accused by many
Sunni Arabs of supporting death squads. But Mr. Qaisi also has enemies
among Sunni Arab leaders who, like Mr. Qaisi, claim to represent the
disaffected people who form the backbone of the insurgency.
In virtually all the previous offensives along the Euphrates River
corridor, marines found that the insurgents had largely moved away by
the time the Americans invaded the towns.
The operations took several weeks to plan, and commanders suspect
that the guerrillas somehow received leaked information, subverting any
chance of surprise. Often, marines kicked down doors along dusty
streets to find that homes had been abandoned.
But Marine Corps officers said Saturday that they were encountering
resistance in Husayba. In the first hours after the operation began at
4 a.m., when infantry units pushed in from the west, there was little
shooting. But by dawn, insurgents were firing Kalashnikov rifles and an
occasional rocket-propelled grenade.
"We met more resistance than I expected," said Capt. Conlon Carabine
of Indian Company of the Third Battalion, Sixth Marine Regiment. "I
thought they were planning more on a defensive posture."
The Americans found it difficult to spot the guerrillas, though they
would occasionally see a black-clad figure sprinting through a house or
down a street. Some officers called in airstrikes. Others ordered
Abrams tanks to blast away with their main cannons.
"I got bombs; he
got bombs," Colonel Davis said. "I got more bombs than he got."
Even so, as they began the house-to-house searches, moving west to
east like a croupier's rake, marines found empty rooms, with dishes
washed and possessions carefully stored away, all awaiting the owners'
return, as in other towns along the Euphrates that the Marines had
invaded.
There had been an exodus of families during the past several weeks,
officers said. It appeared that word of the offensive had leaked out in
advance once again, or that insurgents had simply assumed that the
Marines would strike Husayba because it had been the only major town
along the Euphrates left untouched by the Americans in the recent
offensives.