- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S.
forces have launched a major offensive on the rebel stronghold of Samarra
after a series of horrific car bombings in Baghdad on Thursday that killed
41 people, mostly children.
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- Residents of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, told
Reuters by telephone that big explosions were shaking the city, one of
several places where the U.S. military has vowed to wrest control from
insurgents to enable elections in January.
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- The residents, speaking early on Friday morning Iraq
time, said there were more than two hours of air strikes and most residents
were sheltering indoors.
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- CNN's reporter in Iraq, Jane Arraf, in a live broadcast
from Samarra, said she was accompanying U.S. forces engaged in the attack,
which she described as "an entire brigade-size operation into Samarra
to root out insurgents."
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- Arraf said the forces, accompanied by Iraqi national
guards, were moving "sector by sector through the city to secure it."
Power had been cut off and her report was punctuated several times by what
she said were explosions of rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.
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- The U.S. military has said it wants to retake Samarra,
Falluja, Ramadi and the Baghdad neighborhoods of Sadr City and Haifa Street,
which are in the hands of insurgents, by the end of the year to create
the right conditions for the election.
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- In Falluja, 30 miles west of Baghdad, U.S. forces on
Thursday destroyed a building they said was being used by fighters loyal
to al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
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- Iraqi doctors said at least three people were killed
and eight wounded in the attack.
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- MANY CHILDREN KILLED
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- In one of the bloodiest incidents in the conflict, insurgents
detonated three car bombs near a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad on Thursday.
Most of the 41 dead were children rushing to collect sweets from American
troops.
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- In two other attacks, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle
near a U.S. checkpoint outside the capital, killing two policemen and a
U.S. soldier, and a car bomb killed four people in the restive northern
Iraq town of Tal Afar.
- © Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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