- SAMARRA, Iraq (Reuters) --
U.S.-led forces backed by warplanes tightened their grip on the rebel
stronghold
of Samarra Saturday, saying they had killed 125 rebels in one of the
largest
offensives since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
-
- The two-day offensive to retake Samarra, some 100 km
(60 miles) north of Baghdad, also resulted in the capture of 88 insurgents,
the commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division said.
-
- Major General John Batiste told CNN that operations in
the town would continue for several days.
-
- Sporadic gunfire could be heard in the city center on
Saturday, near a revered mosque, but otherwise the town was quiet two days
after 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops launched the operation, the first in
a campaign to retake all rebel areas.
-
- More than 80 bodies were brought in to Samarra's hospital
on Friday, and five more Saturday. Others were left in the streets, with
health workers too busy to collect them. The Iraqi Red Crescent said it
had evacuated 25 wounded people late on Friday, including a young girl
who later died.
-
- Some residents fled, fearing for their lives.
-
- "It took me three hours to get to a safe
place,"
said Abu Muhammad, a laborer, standing on Samarra's outskirts on Saturday
as a thick plume of dark smoke rose up behind him.
-
- "Not all of us are the resistance. You can see the
resistance. Go see the bodies in the streets of Samarra.
-
- "Snipers are positioned over houses. They shoot
at us when we try to go out," he said, not specifying whether he meant
American or insurgent gunmen.
-
- The U.S. military said in a statement that Iraqi National
Guards had secured Samarra's hospital and a team of 70 Iraqi volunteers
had arrived from Tikrit, 75 km (45 miles) to the north, to help deal with
the wounded.
-
- Iraq's interior minister, a former senior official in
the Samarra regional government, visited the city Saturday to look at what
the offensive had achieved and gauge local opinion.
-
- The U.S. military said it launched a "precision
strike" on Saturday in another rebel-held city, Falluja, west of
Baghdad.
-
- "Multi-National Force-Iraq conducted a precision
strike against a building where 15 to 20 anti-Iraqi force personnel were
conducting military-style training on the outskirts of Falluja," the
military said in a statement.
-
- PRE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN
-
- The U.S. military has vowed to wrest all rebel-held areas
from insurgents before the end of the year so elections can be held in
January. Iraq's defense minister said the offensive would begin in October
and Samarra appears the first major step.
-
- As well as Samarra, a town of more than 100,000, U.S.
forces will have to retake Falluja and Ramadi, west of Baghdad, and several
areas of the capital, including the Shi'ite district of Sadr City, if the
nation is to be pacified before elections.
-
- Falluja was attacked by U.S. warplanes overnight, the
latest in a weeks-long campaign of aerial bombardments targeting suspected
hideouts used by followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
Washington's most-wanted man in Iraq.
-
- Doctors said seven people were killed and 13 wounded
in the strike, and residents angrily denounced the Americans saying the
dead were civilians, not foreign fighters. The U.S. military says it makes
only "precision strikes" on known militant hideouts.
-
- Underlining the problems faced by Iraq's government and
its U.S. allies as they try to win over a restive population, an Iraqi
Islamist group beheaded an Iraqi contractor it said was working for U.S.
forces, an Internet video showed.
-
- "We say to all those who even consider working with
the crusader forces that they should repent," the Ansar al-Sunna group
said on the video posted on an Islamist Web site.
-
- Since April, more than 140 foreigners have been seized
in Iraq and about 30 have been killed. Hundreds more Iraqis have been
kidnapped,
mostly for ransom rather than political reasons.
-
- The Polish military said Saturday a wanted general who
used to serve Saddam was captured near the town of Hilla in the
Polish-commanded
stabilization zone.
-
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