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Monday 06/16/2003 1:30:25am Name: Homepage: E-Mail: Referred By: Just Surfed In City/Country: Comments: Iraqis Angered by U.S. Security Sweep 1 hour, 4 minutes ago By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer FALLUJAH, Iraq - Jassim Mohammed and his family were sleeping out on the front yard — an escape from the summer's stifling heat — when U.S. soldiers stormed in at 3 a.m., kicking the gate open and rushing past them into the house. Outside, U.S. tanks and fighting vehicles kicked up dust as they rumbled on the dirt roads. Overhead, helicopters flew low. Frightened by the noise and the sight of the soldiers, Mohammed's younger children screamed. An hour later, the 60-year-old security guard said, the soldiers left with two of his sons — Salah, 25, and Mohammed, 26 — in handcuffs and with books and a stack of family documents. "Americans have no manners or morals," said 27-year-old Omar Saadoun, a neighbor. The raids were part of a U.S. military operation Sunday, involving hundreds of infantrymen backed by tanks and helicopters that aimed to seize illegal weapons and root out resistance. Fallujah, a restive town west of Baghdad, is suspected of harboring hard-core Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) loyalists and members of his Baath party. U.S. troops said they no resistance in the operation and suffered no injuries. Residents who spoke to The Associated Press in Fallujah also reported no injuries, though they were angered by the aggressive behavior of American soldiers. "We got rid of one problem and now we have a bigger one," said Mohammed, turning his face away to wipe away tears. "Even Saddam never did this to us." Yazi Mohammed, one of Mohammed's two wives, took a visitor on a tour of the concrete-floored and sparsely furnished house. Signs of a search were still visible in one room. "Look, does this please God almighty?" she asked, pointing to children's clothes and tools scattered on the floor. At a nearby house, Widad Ismail said her husband, Firas Abbas, his brothers Ahmed and Osama and cousin Hani Hashem were handcuffed and taken away by American soldiers, also around 3 a.m. All three brothers are in their 20s. Hashem is 19. Like most areas to the north and west of Baghdad, Fallujah is a conservative bastion of Arabs subscribing to the mainstream Sunni sect of Islam. Iraq (news - web sites)'s minority Sunni Arabs have traditionally provided the backbone of Iraq's military and professional classes, enjoying a near monopoly over political power and sidelining the Shiite Muslim majority and other ethnic groups. Saddam, himself a Sunni, was their patron, but now that he is gone, their future looks uncertain. Realizing the magnitude of anti-U.S. sentiments in Fallujah, the U.S. military is carrying out its security sweeps in tandem with a charm offensive designed to persuade the city's 200,000 residents that Americans are in Iraq to help. Not far from Mohammed's house, U.S. soldiers were installing 16 new blackboards and 18 ceiling fans at a girls' primary school. Next door, two U.S. bulldozers were clearing up garbage from a dusty field. An Arabic-language message blaring from a loudspeaker in a U.S. military vehicle invited residents to apply for security jobs and told residents that the raids earlier on the day were meant to "make Fallujah a safer place." Speaking at the school's gate, U.S. Col. John Peabody, commander of an engineering brigade from the 3rd Infantry Division, said Fallujah residents were slowly coming to terms with the American presence in their city, but acknowledged that there were still incidents when locals threw stones at U.S. troops or spat on them. "We are trying to make a positive difference for the people of Fallujah. We are trying to win minds and hearts here," said Peabody, a 45-year-old native of Norwalk, Ohio. The goodwill gestures got a lukewarm response. Jameela Kareem, a 40-year-old teacher, complained that the presence of U.S. soldiers at the school prompted some parents to keep their children at home. "The children are scared of the soldiers," she said. Hana'a Hamad, the headmistress, reacted angrily when an Iraqi translator working with the U.S. military handed her five-year-old daughter, Woroud, a sweet from an American soldier. "You must first ask me whether I want my daughter to take it from you," she said. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=540&e=2&u =/ap/20030615/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_scene

Monday 06/16/2003 1:29:14am Name: Homepage: E-Mail: Referred By: Just Surfed In City/Country: Comments: French Troops Come Under Fire in Congo Sat Jun 14, 4:01 PM ET By ANDREW ENGLAND, Associated Press Writer BUNIA, Congo - French troops leading an emergency force in Congo came under fire for the first time Saturday in their mission to stabilize this northeastern town ravaged by tribal turf wars. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: DR Congo The firefight on the outskirts of Bunia, from which the French special forces emerged unscathed, occurred amid growing concern that the force's mandate is too limited and does not include the demilitarization of the town that six weeks ago boasted a university, a brand-new mobile phone network and a thriving trade in gold. "I don't know why they are here," said Jan Mol, a Dutch priest who has lived in Bunia for 15 years. "It's just show." The French patrol — among the first 400 members of a force expected to number 1,400 — returned small arms, heavy machine gun and light tank fire after being fired at by attackers about 4 miles south of Bunia, spokesman Maj. Xavier Pons said. Pons said it was impossible to know who provoked the 20-minute gun battle and whether the 70 French troops and 20 vehicles were the target or had been caught in the cross fire between the Lendu and Hema tribal militia. The Hema Union of Congolese Patriots, or UPC, which currently controls the town, blamed the Lendu for the attack on the French patrol. The Lendu could not be reached for comment. Later, French troops scoured the hilly area from where the fire had come but found nothing — "no corpses, nothing," Pons said. The Hema and Lendu militias began intense fighting for control of Bunia, the capital of unstable Ituri province, in early May after some 6,000 troops from neighboring Uganda pulled out in accordance with an agreement to end a five-year civil war in Africa's third-largest nation. More than 400 people were killed in a week of fighting between the factions, which were armed with bows and arrows, machetes, assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Corpses lay abandoned on the streets for days as a handful of U.N. aid workers and thousands of Congolese seeking refuge huddled in U.N. compounds in the town center and at the airport. About 700 U.N. troops, who could only fire in self-defense, guarded their compounds and looked on. The high number of civilian deaths led the U.N. Security Council to authorize the deployment in Bunia of the international force, which began arriving on June 6. The force, which is authorized to shoot to kill if necessary, has a three-month mission to secure the town and its airport and provide security for displaced people and aid agencies. But the troops won't be deployed outside Bunia where fighting continues and they don't have a mandate to disarm fighters. The French-led troops will be replaced by a U.N. contingent from Bangladesh in September. Congolese and analysts say that troubles will continue unless the thousands of tribal fighters — some as young as 10 — can be disarmed. The International Crisis Group, a respected Brussels, Belgium-based think tank, on Friday called for a much larger intervention force operating over a much larger area for a longer period of time. Calling the present emergency force "a stopgap," ICG Africa director Francois Grignon said if Bunia were not urgently demilitarized, the French-led force "is likely to be caught in competing accusations from all the militias that almost certainly will lead to conflict." Spokesman Col. Gerard Dubois said he was confident the force would succeed in stabilizing the area. "We have the mandate and orders to respond to aggression and to use our weapons to protect those we have to protect," he said. The province of Ituri, which is about twice the size of Maryland, is a vast, fertile, mineral-rich region of forests, lush, green hills and rivers running with grains of gold. But it's also the scene of some of the worst atrocities committed during the civil war in Congo ranging from massacres in churches and hospitals to cannibalism and rape. Tribal disputes over power, land and other resources date back to the 19th century, but the outbreak of civil war in August 1998 brought a deadly new dimension to their differences as Rwanda, Uganda and the Congolese government armed and supported rival factions. An estimated 50,000 civilians have been killed in Ituri since 1999. The civil war erupted when neighboring Uganda and Rwanda sent troops into Congo to support rebels seeking to oust then-President Laurent Kabila, whom they accused of supporting insurgents threatening regional security. Despite a series of peace deals leading to the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country, tribal militia and rebel factions backed by Uganda, Rwanda and the Congolese government continue to fight each other in eastern and northeastern Congo. The best the international force can hope to achieve is a "dampening effect," said Jonathan Stevenson, a senior analyst at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "These (armed) groups maintain an interest in instability rather than stability because they are able to do better for themselves at the end of the barrel of a gun than by entrusting their future politically to the (Congolese) government," he said. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030614/ ap_on_re_af/congo_fighting_8

Monday 06/16/2003 1:27:28am Name: Homepage: E-Mail: Referred By: Just Surfed In City/Country: Comments: U.S. Forces Launch Raids Across Iraq to Quell Uprisings Sun Jun 15, 9:05 AM ET Add Top Stories - The New York Times to My Yahoo! By DAVID ROHDE The New York Times FALLUJA, Iraq (news - web sites), Sunday, June 15 Thousands of American troops backed by tanks, planes and helicopters carried out extensive raids early this morning in this restive city and in at least two other Iraqi cities, military officials said. The military operation was one of the largest in Iraq since the end of major fighting. No American casualties were reported, and no figures were released for Iraqi casualties. Dozens of suspected Baath Party members were detained in the raids, officials said. It was not known early today whether any senior Iraqi officials were apprehended. The raids had been planned for days, military officials said, and appeared to be the latest phase of an effort to break the back of a nascent armed resistance that had sprung up in the swathe of the country dominated by Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority. More raids are expected this week, military officials said. "This thing is happening all over Iraq tonight," said Lt. Col. Eric Schwartz, who oversaw raids early today in the southern half of Falluja, a city 35 miles west of Baghdad that has become a center of armed resistance. "It's a massive, coordinated effort." Saying that the raids were part of continuing operations, American military officials said they would not identify the other cities involved this morning. In the last three weeks, 10 American soldiers have been killed and dozens have been wounded in ambushes carried out by unknown gunmen in the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of Baghdad. A combination of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) loyalists, Islamic militants and foreign fighters are believed to have carried out attacks on American troops. Using small arms and grenades, the attackers have sharply increased American casualties in Iraq. Colonel Schwartz, who commands a battalion of soldiers in the Army's Third Infantry Division, emphasized here that the early morning raids would be followed by concentrated relief efforts later today to win the support of the Iraqi people, in a "carrot and stick" approach. He said soldiers would distribute truckloads of free gasoline, for example, in Falluja and help repair local schools and soccer fields. In the past, Iraqis have reacted angrily to such raids, calling them heavy-handed and warning that American forces are turning Iraqi public opinion against them. By the time the raids were completed by dawn this morning, angry Iraqis were making those charges again. The operation began here just after 2 a.m. local time, with dozens of American military vehicles M1-A1 Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and Humvees rumbling out of the sprawling American base west of town. American units blocked all traffic on the main highway running across Iraq and linking Falluja to Baghdad. As convoys of military vehicles converged on their targets, Kiowa helicopters, pilotless drones and fighter jets circled overhead. Across Falluja, teams of soldiers from the Third Infantry Division raided houses looking for the men believed to have planned and carried out the recent ambushes of American soldiers, military officials said. Soldiers also raided suspected weapons caches. In one house, 15 suspected members of the hard-line Saddam Fedayeen were detained. Colonel Schwartz said some Iraqis resisted and were shot by Americansoldiers. He did not have complete Iraqi casualty figures this morning, but said no Americans were hurt. He said the goal of the raid and subsequent distribution of relief aid was to show that the Americans are pursuing only the handful of people carrying out the attacks, while at the same time trying to help the vast majority of people in the city. He said he hoped the people of Falluja would see that the raids this morning were aimed specifically at the militants, not ordinary residents. "What we have to do is get these Baathist folks," he said. Colonel Schwartz added that tensions had eased somewhat in Falluja since his battalion arrived 12 days ago as part of a redeployment of troops that has quadrupled the number of allied forces here. A raid at 4 a.m. on a gas station used as a weapons transfer point showed the advantages and disadvantages of the sweeps. An Abrams battle tank and four Bradley fighting vehicles drove toward the gas station, which sits just off a main road in the town. In front of the station, all four of the Bradley's abruptly stopped, pivoted and pointed their gun barrels and headlights at it. The rear hatches of the vehicles swung open and infantrymen poured outside, aiming their rifles at a row of trucks. In the glare of the headlights, Iraqi truck drivers dropped up in the cabs of the trucks where they had been sleeping. Seemingly baffled by what was happening, they obeyed American instructions to line up and be searched and questioned. "We are searching for weapons," an American soldier explained to the 20 drivers. All of them denied having any arms. "We have nothing but potatoes," one driver said. As the Americans scoured the trucks, one man nervously whispered to another in Arabic. "Do you have weapons?" "No, no," the other answered. "Am I stupid enough to bring it here?" Other drivers complained that their trucks had just been searched at an American checkpoint up the road. When a journalist took photos of them being searched, they complained even more loudly. "They are taking the pictures so they can show their people them searching Iraqis," one man said. "Do they think we are monkeys?" Tarik Abud Mousa, a 40-year-old truck driver from the city of Qaim in western Iraq, said the drivers had been sleeping peacefully when the Americans arrived. He called the searches a humiliation. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=68&ncid=68&e=3&u=/ nyt/20030615/ts_nyt/usforceslaunchraidsacrossiraqtoquelluprisings

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