http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171006,00.html
Marines Kill at Least Eight Militants in Iraq
QAIM, Iraq — Hundreds of U.S. troops combed through a village near the Syrian border Sunday, breaking into houses and fighting sporadic gun battles with gunmen on the second day of a new offensive against Al Qaeda insurgents. At least eight militants were killed, the military said.
Many residents fled Sadah village into Syria before the offensive began, witnesses said, and the 1,000 U.S. soldiers involved appeared to be widening the sweep into two nearby towns.
In Karabila, troops with loudspeakers warned residents to stay inside their homes for their own safety Sunday, witnesses said. In Rumana, a town on the other side of the Euphrates River, helicopters fired on several houses, sending plumes of black smoke up into the air, the witnesses said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of concern for their security.
A U.S. military spokeswoman in Baghdad said she could not immediately confirm that the offensive had expanded from Sadah to Karabila and Rumana.
No American casualties were reported in the offensive, which is aimed at rooting out Al Qaeda militants the military believes have been using Sadah as a "sanctuary," closing insurgent supply routes and stemming violence ahead of Iraq's crucial vote on a new constitution on Oct. 15...
...The assault on Sadah, called Operation Iron Fist, was the fourth large U.S. offensive near the Syrian border since May. But the militants running rampant in large parts of western Iraq have proven difficult to put down, fleeing in the face of the assaults, then moving back in after the assaults end and the bulk of troops withdraw.
On Sunday, insurgents hiding in houses fired sporadically on U.S. troops in the street from time to time but Sadah largely was calm, said residents in the village eight miles east of the Syrian border.
On the offensive's first day, troops destroyed several car bombs and at least one roadside bomb, and there were two clashes with gunmen, the military said Sunday in its first detailed report on the operation.
Insurgents drove two vehicles toward a U.S. Marine position, dismounted and began to attack with small-arms fire, the military said Sunday. One vehicle was found to be rigged with explosives. The battle left four insurgents dead, the military said, and a fifth surrendered.
North of Sadah, U.S. forces killed three members of the Al Qaeda in Iraq insurgent group after they attacked a U.S. checkpoint with small-arms fire, the military said.
Another militant was killed when a U.S. Cobra helicopter destroyed a vehicle after its driver fired on a Marine position with a rocket-propelled grenade, the military said.
The Cobra also destroyed a second vehicle believed to be carrying grenades, but the vehicle's driver and passenger escaped, the military said.
Sadah, 180 miles northwest of Baghdad, is an isolated village of about 2,000 people, with one main road and about 200 houses scattered in a rural area near Qaim in Iraq's western province of Anbar.
The U.S. military said Al Qaeda in Iraq, the country's most fearsome militant group that has launched a wave of suicide bombings, had taken control of Sadah, and foreign fighters were using it as a way station as they enter from Syria to join the insurgency.