Point/CounterpointDebate newsworthy and other 'hot-button' topics here. If it can be debated, this is the forum for it. Can't be thin skinned - people will disagree with you. No flaming or personal attacks.
A cyclist passes by a burning U.S. Army Abrams tank after an attack on a highway junction in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, April 10, 2004. Street fighting erupted in Baghdad and sporadic gunfire echoed across Falluja despite a new U.S. truce offer and an effort by Iraqi officials to secure a peace deal with insurgents in the western city
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FALLUJAH, Iraq - Gunmen shot down a U.S. attack helicopter during fighting in western Baghdad on Sunday, killing its two crew members. Insurgents and Marines called a cease-fire in the besieged city of Fallujah, but the fragile peace was shaken by a gunbattle that wounded two Americans.
A pall of black smoke rose on Baghdad's western edge where a military spokesman said the AH-64 Apache helicopter was downed by ground fire in the morning. More helicopters circled overhead, while U.S. troops closed off the main highway — a key supply route into the capital. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told a news briefing Sunday that the two-member crew was killed and a quick-reaction team was collecting the bodies.
Heavy firing was heard, and tanks and Humvees moved into the area near the suburb of Abu Ghraib, where masked gunmen have wreaked havoc in the suburb for the past three days, attacking fuel convoys and blowing up tanker trucks. Insurgents kidnapped an American civilian and killed a U.S. soldier in the area Friday. The captors of the American hostage — Thomas Hammil, a Mississippi native who works for a U.S. contractor in Iraq threatened to kill and burn him unless U.S. troops end their assault on Fallujah by 6 a.m. Sunday. The deadline passed with no word on Hammil's fate. Video footage aired on Arabic television Sunday showed the bodies of two dead Westerners — apparently a pair of Americans seen by APTN cameramen on Friday being dragged out of a car on the Abu Ghraib highway, in a different incident from Hammil's kidnapping.
The cameramen fled the scene Friday, and the fate of the two men was unknown. But one of the bodies in Sunday's footage resembled one of the Americans taken out of the car.
The new video showed the bodies surrounded by gunmen, who are heard on the tape saying the two are American intelligence officers. One of the bodies lay sprawled on the pavement, his face bloodied and his right leg drenched in blood. The other body had been rolled face down, his shirt lifted to reveal a bullet hole in his back. Both wore dark T-shirts and khaki pants often worn by private contractors. Also Sunday, Germany's Foreign Ministry said two security agents for the German Embassy in Baghdad who have been missing in Iraq for several days are most likely dead.
The two German men, ages 38 and 25, were traveling from Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad on a routine trip Wednesday and were ambushed near Fallujah, according to the ministry. Other vehicles in the convoy reached the embassy on Thursday after coming under fire, the ministry said. Fallujah — 35 miles west of Baghdad — saw occasional sniper fire Sunday, but was still the quietest it has been all week. Sunni insurgents and Marines agreed to a cease-fire that started early Sunday will last until the evening amid talks between Iraqi officials on how to end the violence.
Hundreds of U.S. reinforcements moved in place on the city edge, joining 1,200 Marines and nearly 900 Iraqi security forces already involved in the fighting. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt warned that an all-out assault could resume if talks don't produce results.
"We haven't imposed any terms. At the moment we're just trying to get the cease-fire in place," L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "What were trying to do is simply get the forces to stop firing." "We're in a testing time right now," Bremer said. "We always knew there were going to be some severe tests as we move forward."
The most serious break in Sunday's peace came when a sniper opened fire on U.S. patrol, wounding two Marines, commanders said. In the ensuing gunbattle, at least one insurgent was killed. After the firefight, the city was largely quiet again. "They are not playing by the rules, sir," Marine Capt. Jason Smith radioed to his commander after taking fire in another incident in which the troops did not fire back.
U.S. forces have been instructed not to launch offensive attacks on the rebels, said Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, which is deployed in the city's south. A guerrilla commander in Fallujah's al-Jolan neighborhood told Al-Jazeera television that his fighters would abide by the truce.
"I have ordered my fighters to adhere to the cease-fire," said the commander, identifying himself only by the nom de guerre Abu Muadh. "But I warn everyone: If the enemy breaks the cease-fire, we will respond." He added that the truce was due to last until 10 p.m. (2 p.m. EDT), but that talks were ongoing in an attempt to extend it.
Sunday was the first that gunmen have said they were joining the halt in offensive operations that Marines have largely stuck to unilaterally since noon Friday. U.S. commanders called the halt at the request of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, where many members have been angered by bloodshed from the Fallujah campaign launched April 5.
Councilmembers were holding a second day of negotiations with city representatives Sunday in an attempt to win the handover of Iraqis who killed and mutilated four American civilians on March 31 and of other militants. "Were we not at this point observing (the halt) it could well have been that we would have had the entire the city by this point," Kimmitt said Saturday. He said fighters must "lay down their arms" and renounce their membership in extremist groups to fully end the insurgency that has made Fallujah its stronghold.
About a third of the city's population of 200,000 fled Friday and Saturday, streaming out in cars, though Marines turned back any military-age men trying to leave, Byrne said. During the lull, Marines distributed food to beleaguered residents near the area held by U.S. troops. "Families are holed up in houses. They have been told to stay inside. But they are running out of water and food. We are trying to get rations to them," said Marine Capt. Jason Smith, 30, from Baton Rogue, La.
Hospital officials said Wednesday that more than 280 people have been killed in the week of fighting in Fallujah, but no updated figures have been obtained since and many bodies have been buried at the city's main soccer field without even being taken to the hospital. At least five Marines have died in the fighting. Kimmett said 60 insurgents had been captured, including five foreign Arabs. In southern Iraq, some 1.5 million Shiite pilgrims marked one of their holiest religious days, al-Arbaeen. In the city of Karbala, hundreds of Shiite militiamen — but no police — patrolled the street preparing for a possible U.S. assault against rebellious followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
U.S. commanders have suggested they will move against al-Sadr, whose militia has control of Karbala and two other cities, after the al-Arbaeen ceremonies, which mark the end of a 40-day mourning period for a 7th-century martyred Shiite saint. In fighting across the country over the past week — including in Fallujah and in the uprising by al-Sadr's Shiite militia in the south — 47 American soldiers and more than 550 Iraqis have been killed. At least 649 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
In other violence:
_ Gunmen ambushed Iraqi police before dawn Sunday in the northern city of Kirkuk, sparking a battle joined by U.S. troops. Four attackers were killed, said Iraqi Col. Sarhad Qadir.
_ Insurgents attacked two Iraqi police patrols in Mosul on Saturday in fights that killed two Iraqi police, a gunman and two passers-by, according to the hospital.
_ Armed men clashed with U.S. soldiers in the Sunni neighborhood of al-Azamiyah in Baghdad on Saturday. Four Iraqis were killed.
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bd, that's not what db11 flies is it? I know he was home a week or so ago, I talked to his wife, but he was heading back over there. *saying extra prayers for taz...I know either way she'll be extremely upset*
John - An 'old fashion' seige is not practical. The civilian population suffers too much in those types of things. It also alienates us from the very population we are there to help. We only need to control access. We are doing that and allowing food and medicine in, but controlling the population. The next step is to take ... proactive measures ... to deal with the BG's inside. And you can bet that there is significant payback happening.
Point/Counterpoint
04-11-2004, 10:52
AH-64 shot down, pilots killed. 
