http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171051,00.html
U.S. 'Iron Fist' Offensive Kills At Least 36 Iraq Militants
Monday, October 03, 2005
QAIM, Iraq — A U.S. offensive aimed at Al Qaeda in Iraq insurgents in western Iraq entered its third day Monday, with airstrikes in a town on the banks of the Euphrates River, witnesses said. At least 36 militants have died since the fighting began, officials said.
No serious U.S. casualties have been reported in the "Iron Fist" offensive by 1,000 Marines, soldiers and sailors near the Syrian border...
...The offensive and street fighting come less than two weeks before the national referendum on a new Iraqi constitution. Al Qaeda in Iraq and other groups in the Sunni-led insurgency have killed at least 207 people over the past eight days in a bid to wreck the vote.
On Sunday, Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed to have taken two U.S. Marines captive during the fighting and threatened to kill them within 24 hours unless all female Sunni detainees are released from U.S. and Iraqi prisons in the country. The U.S. military said the claim appeared false but that it was conducting checks "to verify that all Marines are accounted for."...
...The U.S. offensive in western Iraq by 1,000 Marines, soldiers and sailors began early Saturday in the village of Sadah and has since spread to Karabilah and Rumana, two nearby towns on the banks of the Euphrates River. On Monday, witnesses told The Associated Press that helicopter attacks on Rumana were sending up clouds of black smoke.
No casualties were immediately reported in Monday's fighting by the witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for their own safety, or by the U.S. military command center in Baghdad.
The military says Al Qaeda in Iraq, the country's most feared insurgent group, has turned the area near Iraq's border into a "sanctuary" and a way-station for foreign fighters entering from Syria.
In Karabilah, Marines clashed with insurgents who opened fire from a building on Sunday in a firefight that killed eight militants, the military said.
Most of the militants appeared to have slipped out of Sadah before the force moved in, and hundreds of the village's residents fled into Syria ahead of the assault.
There was "virtually no opposition" in Sadah, the Marine commander in western Anbar province, Col. Stephen W. Davis, told The Associated Press.
At least 28 militants were killed in fighting Sunday, Davis said, bringing the two-day toll among insurgents to 36. There have been no serious U.S. casualties in the operation, he said.
On Monday, a journalist embedded with Marines in eastern Karabilah filed video showing the attack. About 20 Iraqi civilians fled the fighting, and the wounded included an Iraqi mother, father and their child, who were bleeding after being hit by flying pieces of concrete.
At one point, it was reported that as Marine snipers fired from rooftops and U.S. helicopters flew overhead, the military's advance into eastern Karabilah was slowed for about an hour by sporadic gunfire from suspected militants...