| Fallujah is like Vietnam says US commander
BY NED PARKER IN FALLUJAH
US Marines met ferocious resistance in the western Iraqi town of Fallujah today as they pressed a four-day offensive against Sunni Muslim insurgents, prompting their commander to make comparisons with the Vietnam war.
As the Marines inched forward block-by-block taking sniper fire and hit-and-run attacks with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, a US medic said the resistance was more intense than in last spring’s invasion.
Mortar and small-arms fire were launched by small groups of insurgents who materialised from alleyways or on rooftops, only to melt away again.
The thud of mortar rounds echoed around the town and plumes of smoke dotted the landscape. Machine-gun fire rattled through the streets as F-16 warplanes buzzed overhead for surveillance.
After more than three days of ferocious fighting, the Marines had managed to move just a little over a mile through an industrial zone, on the eastern edge of the town, which they had thought was largely abandoned.
By this afternoon, the Marines had stopped their advance to wait for reinforcement from a third battalion, officers said.
"Right now we’re just holding fast," said First Lieutenant Luke Pernotto, of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines."We tried to move a little bit, but we don’t have enough people to push the insurgents back."
"Reinforcements will help us a lot. They shoot at us and we don’t have enough people to go seal off where they’re going back to."
The flames of exploding rockets had lit the sky as the Marines came under repeated mortar and RPG fire from factories, homes and mosques, some of it from areas supposedly already cleared.
"MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) is the most intense kind of fighting," said Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne, a battalion commander.
"And this is like Hue City in Vietnam," he said referring to the former imperial capital where in 1968 US troops faced the most ferocious street fighting of the communists’ decisive Tet offensive.
Marines, who had taken part in the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s armed forces a year ago, said the resistance they were facing from the insurgents in Fallujah was tougher than anything thrown at them by the old regime’s once feared Republican Guards.
"Last year, we’d take an objective, secure it and go to sleep," recalled medic Percy Davila, 29, of the 1st Batallion.
"But this is relentless. This is more like a real war," Mr Davila told AFP at a machine shop turned into a makeshift command post.
Sergeant James Ramsel, of the battalion’s Alpha Company, said there had been no let-up in the resistance. "It’s been going on all night; it’s still going on."
An AFP correspondent saw two seriously wounded Marines being evacuated from the industrial area on Fallujah’s eastern outskirts.
Hospital sources cited by Arabic news network Al-Jazeera said a total of 105 Iraqis had been killed in Fallujah since Tuesday evening.
The ferocity of the fighting stopped some of the corpses from being cleared from the streets.
Flies buzzed over the body of a mustachioed 40-year-old, shot in the neck by US Marines after he fired a rocket-propelled grenade at them across the industrial wasteland of garages, factories and metal shops.
"We don’t know where to move him," said a marine, glancing over at the bloodied corpse as rockets struck just a block away, sending columns of black smoke into the air.
Captain Chris Chown, a marine battalion air officer, conceded that the insurgents were proving not only determined but also adept at using guerrilla attacks to counter the US advantage in equipment and numbers.
"It’s tough. These guys are determined. One by one they can’t stand up to the US military force so they are using all the scenery available to them," Captain Chown told a reporter embedded with the unit.
"One guy can basically hold down a whole squad. He shoots from one window and pops in another. They are fierce and very determined but they can’t shoot straight. They are basically spraying and praying."
However, Captain Chown expressed concern that the outgunned Iraqis could still end up winning the battle of public opinion if the fighting continued.
"I hope one day we don’t get so jaded we just roll down the streets in armoured vehicles shooting at whatever moves," she said. "If that happens we need to take a step back and look at the humanity of the place or we’ve just lost our mission.
"We are at a crossroads in Fallujah ... You get to a critical juncture where one small event is going to tip things for us or against us. If we’re not there already, we’re getting pretty close."
Ned Parker is an embedded reporter for the Agence France-Presse. | |
