- The New York Times carried a story dated 12-29-3 entitled
'2 American Soldiers Die in Iraq; 7 Are Wounded'.
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- Several hours later, that story had disappeared from
the Times website, and the SAME link brought up a story which did not mention
any US casualties. The text of the original New York Times story is posted
below:
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- 2 American Soldiers Die in Iraq; 7 Are Wounded
- By Terence Neilan
The New York Times
12-29-3
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- Two American soldiers died in Iraq, the United States
military announced today, one in an incident involving suspected rebels
and another from an undetermined illness at a medical facility.
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- In Baghdad on Sunday, a soldier from a First Armored
Division task force was killed and five other soldiers were wounded when
an improvised explosive device detonated during a patrol east of the Karadah
district of the capital at about 10:13 a.m.
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- The wounded soldiers were evacuated to military medical
facilities, Central Command said in a statement today, but no other information
was available.
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- The soldier who died from an unknown illness, from Task
Force Ironhorse, was being treated at a medical center about six miles
west of Bayji, between Tikrit and Mosul. Medical personnel immediately
attended to the soldier, who was not identified, but were unable to revive
him, Central Command said.
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- The incident is being investigated, the command said.
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- In an incident in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday,
three Iraqis were killed and two American soldiers were wounded when a
search for insurgents set off a firefight. Suspected members of the Ansar
Al Islam militant group threw a grenade and fired on soldiers of the Second
Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, searching a home for insurgents,
the command said.
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- When the soldiers tried to enter the home the suspects
engaged them with small arms fire and one grenade. The unit returned fire,
then entered and cleared the building in what is known as a cordon and
knock operation.
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- The American soldiers killed three terrorists during
the operation, Central Command said, and turned one male, two females and
three children over to the Iraqi police. The two wounded American soldiers
were reported to be in stable condition.
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- Sgt. Robert Woodward of the 101st Airborne Division,
which has its headquarters in Mosul, told The Associated Press, "We
knock on the door and give them a chance to surrender, but they fired small
arms and threw a hand grenade at soldiers, who returned fire and entered
the building and cleared it."
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- The house caught fire during the engagement and was extinguished
by the Iraqi Fire Department, the command said.
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- The unit discovered and confiscated two rocket-propelled
grenade launchers, 11 rocket-propelled grenade rounds, 8 grenades, two
AK-47's with 1,100 rounds, one 9-millimeter submachine gun, $30,000 worth
of Iraqi dinar and nine religious books with anticoalition content.
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- Earlier, Maj. Hugh Cate of the 101st Airborne Division
said an American military vehicle in Mosul was attacked by rocket-propelled
grenades and small-arms fire but that there were no injuries or damage.
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- In another development, an Iraqi citizen provided information
to United States Air Force airmen about a large weapons cache that he said
consisted of close to six hundred rockets, Central Command said.
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- The Air Force in turn asked the Army for assistance.
Air Force personnel and a patrol from First Battalion, 68th Armor Regiment,
went to the identified site on Saturday evening investigate.
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- The intelligence acquired suggested the rockets could
be found hidden in some undergrowth along the river next to a tree line.
After a short search, the soldiers and airmen found a berm near a tree
line that was about 35 feet long and 4 feet high. Buried in the berm, covered
with plastic and dirt, they found 580 57-millimeter rockets. The unit secured
the perimeter of the site and coordinated with an explosive ordinance disposal
team for the destruction of the weapons.
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- Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/29/international/worldspecial/29CND-IRAQ.html
?ex=1073365200&en=d5c0c859c7e14363&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
-
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- Now, here is the story the same link was switched to:
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- Death Toll Mounts From Bomb Attacks in Southern
Iraq City
-
- By Neela Banerjee
The New York Times
12-29-3
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- BAGHDAD -- The death toll
from the wave of bombings in the southern Shiite holy city of Karbala has
risen to 19 with the deaths of five more Iraqis from their wounds on Sunday.
In northern Iraq, American troops have gained some ground on the country's
stubborn insurgency by seizing a large cache of rockets in Tikrit and killing
suspected members of the militant Ansar al Islam group in a firefight in
Mosul.
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- Officials said on Sunday that they had arrested five
Iraqi suspects in the Karbala attacks.
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- A member of Iraq's Governing Council told two London-based
Arab newspapers that he had information that Saddam Hussein told his interrogators
of stashing billions of dollars in banks around the world and that Mr.
Hussein is providing interrogators with the names of those who have control
over the flow of funds.
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- Ayad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord party told the
newspapers Al Hayat and Asharq Al Awsat that the Governing Council estimated
that Mr. Hussein had siphoned off $40 billion during his years in power
and that it was now searching banks in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and
other countries for the money.
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- A United States government official dismissed as "completely
wrong" the idea that Mr. Hussein had secreted away so much money or
had provided information about it to his interrogators.
-
- Mr. Allawi could not be reached for comment. But Ali
Abdul Amir, a close aide, said that he thought Mr. Allawi's comments were
accurate. He said that Mr. Allawi would have knowledge of such sensitive
information because his party "interacts with the coalition in many
fields, and things about Saddam's regime is one of those fields."
-
- Members of the Coalition Provisional Authority could
not be reached for comment on Mr. Allawi's assertions. But Intifadh Qanbar,
spokesman for Ahmed Chalabi, another council member, said that while his
party, the Iraqi National Congress, had previous knowledge of money that
Mr. Hussein spirited out of the country, they had not been briefed on new
revelations on the matter after the ousted leader's capture.
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- As a top Iraqi exile figure, Mr. Alawi headed the Iraqi
National Accord, which beginning in the 1995 was the opposition group with
the closest ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. He remains close to
the C.I.A., and visited its headquarters in Langley, Va., this month to
discuss plans to resurrect Iraq's intelligence service, Bush administration
officials said.
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- A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment about such a visit.
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- A Kurdish Democratic Party newspaper reported Monday
that the group's leader, Massoud Barzani, called for revising the power
transfer agreement between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the
Iraqi Governing Council to create a federation that would recognize "Kurdish
rights."
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- Earlier this month, the two main political parties in
this country's long-divided Kurdish north, including Mr. Barzani's group,
moved closer to establishing a unified government. Their drive to create
a federalist system in Iraq giving them wide-ranging autonomy would conflict
with the division of powers promoted by other Iraqi politicians, who want
tighter central control over much smaller provinces throughout the country.
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- In Mosul, the battle between Iraqis and members of the
101st Airborne Division occurred on Sunday when the soldiers tried to search
a house. Three Iraqis were killed in the firefight and two soldiers were
wounded but listed in stable condition. The military identified the Iraqis
as members of Ansar al-Islam, which American officials have long claimed
has ties to Al Qaeda.
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- American aircraft bombed camps suspected of belonging
to the group early in the war, scattering its members. But the American
military in Iraq has maintained since the summer that cells of Ansar al-Islam
appear to have regrouped. Last week, Kurdish officials in the northern
Iraqi city of Erbil said they suspected Ansar al-Islam of being behind
a car bombing that killed four Iraqis in front of the Interior Ministry.
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- In Tikrit, the American military was tipped off by an
Iraqi that a cache of 600 rockets could be found on a riverbank. After
a brief search of a berm along the river, soldiers found 580 57-millimeter
rockets, the military said in a statement.
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- Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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