U.S. says airstrikes targeted terrorist meeting sites in Falluja
October 12, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S. Marines and troops, launched a series of raids Tuesday on seven mosques in the central city of Ramadi, the U.S. military said.
"Our participation in these raids has been limited to supporting Iraqi security forces," U.S. Brig. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford said.
Ramadi is in the restive "Sunni Triangle" area about 70 miles (113 kilometers) west of Baghdad.
Insurgents have used mosques at times to stage attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces.
"The mosques are suspected of participating in a spectrum of insurgent activity, including harboring known terrorists, storing illegal weapons caches, promoting violence against the Iraqi people and encouraging insurgent recruitment, " said a statement from the Combined Press Information Center.
"The raids are an effort to search the mosques for known terrorists and insurgents, illegal weapons caches and insurgent propaganda."
The U.S. military said the mosques are considered holy sites and are granted protective status unless they are used for militant purposes.
On Monday, the U.S. military launched an airstrike against a mosque in Hit -- a town about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of Ramadi -- amid a battle with about 100 insurgents who had attacked U.S. Marines from inside the building.
In other action Tuesday, U.S.-led forces launched airstrikes in Falluja that destroyed a meeting center and a safe house used by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network, the U.S. military said.
The military said "successful precision" strikes took place around midnight and 4 a.m. (5 and 9 p.m. ET Monday).
The first strike destroyed a restaurant and a neighboring building in central Falluja, a witness said.
Firefighters and ambulances were on the scene, and rescue crews were digging through the rubble searching for survivors.
The restaurant owner said four employees were inside at the time of the strike.
A statement from the U.S. military said the building was used as a center by al-Zarqawi to hold terrorist meetings.
"Terrorists frequently planned operations from this location. Plans included targeting Iraqi governmental leadership, Iraqi security forces, coalition forces and innocent Iraqi citizens," the military said.
"The location had been under the terrorist organization's control for more than a year, and innocent civilians knowingly stayed away."
In the second airstrike, the military's statement said, "Intelligence sources tracked and confirmed that al-Zarqawi associates were using the safe house at the time of the strike. The terrorists at the site had been involved in planning suicide attacks and kidnappings."
That attack destroyed a house in an eastern Falluja neighborhood. Hospital sources said four people died in the airstrike.
U.S. warplanes have been making daily bombing runs in Falluja in recent weeks, targeting safe houses and other locations they believe are linked to al-Zarqawi.
Al-Zarqawi has been blamed for fomenting unrest in Iraq through the insurgency, carrying out attacks against U.S. forces, Iraqi government officials and other Iraqis.
His Unification and Jihad group also has been blamed for numerous beheadings of foreigners in Iraq, including the killings of Americans Nicholas Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley and Briton Kenneth Bigley.
U.N. watchdog agency: Nuclear materials gone
Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons have disappeared from Iraq, warns the chief of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency.
Satellite imagery shows entire buildings that once housed high-precision equipment that could be used to make nuclear bombs have been dismantled, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council. (Full story)
A CIA report released last week by chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer concluded that dictator Saddam Hussein terminated his nuclear program in 1991 after the Persian Gulf War.
The U.S. government prevented U.N. weapons inspectors from returning to Iraq after the current war -- thereby blocking the IAEA from monitoring the high-tech equipment and materials.
Anti-proliferation agreements say that the United States and the Iraqi interim government must inform the IAEA of any import or export of such materials and equipment.
"The kind of equipment we're talking about ... is the sort of thing that has a multitude of industrial applications," said IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky in a phone interview from the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
"We were satisfied when we were in Iraq that it was not being used for a nuclear weapons program. In the wrong hands, it could be turned to the use in a nuclear weapons program. Until we establish that this material is in responsible hands, we have to treat it as a serious proliferation concern."
Other developments
A militant group Tuesday announced the beheading of an Iraqi man it said it was holding hostage, the Arabic-language news channel Al-Jazeera reported. Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah posted a statement and video on its Web site, the news channel said. The group accused him of spying for U.S. forces in Iraq. Al-Jazeera also aired a brief video clip of a man surrounded by militants and documents that appeared to be the Iraqi's ID cards. CNN could not immediately confirm the report.
Drive-by gunmen ambushed and killed a city councilman, Abdul-Majeed al-Antar, and his driver Tuesday in the northern city of Mosul, Mosul police Col. Younis al-Jawari said. Two of the councilman's bodyguards were wounded in the attack.
Raids by Iraqi national guard forces in the northern city of Tall 'Afar on Tuesday resulted in the detention of eight insurgents and the confiscation of weapons.
Iraqis aligned with radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia began trickling into police stations Monday in Baghdad to exchange their weapons for coupons they can later use to get cash from the Iraqi government. Rebels were expected to surrender thousands of medium and heavy weapons at various centers in the Sadr City area of the capital during a five-day amnesty announced Saturday, Iraqi officials said. (Full story)
Turkey confirmed Tuesday that kidnappers had freed 10 Turkish hostages in Iraq, The Associated Press reported. The hostages are employees of a Turkish construction company. Arabic TV networks had reported the hostages' release over the weekend, but there had been no confirmation until Tuesday.
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