BAGHDAD: US forces are ready to launch air strikes on towns in western Iraq as they search for Iraq’s Al Qaeda leader, who has declared war on the nation’s Shiss in response to the Iraqi-US offensive in Tal Afar. US army spokesman Major General Rick Lynch told a news briefing yesterday that Al Qaeda’s Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was behind a series of suicide bombs and car bombs in Baghdad on Wednesday and yesterday which killed and wounded hundreds.
“We’ve got great intelligence which tells us where he (Zarqawi) is moving to and where he’s trying to establish safe havens. People focus on the Euphrates River valley because that’s where we believe he’s coming through,” Lynch said.
“Towns close to the Euphrates River valley, including Qaim and Haditha, are towns that we focus on. And as soon as we see him trying to establish a safe haven there, we will conduct operations just like we did in Tal Afar,” he added.
His remarks followed a recent statement by Iraqi Defence Minister Saadoun Dulaimi that government forces were ready to hit insurgents in four other northwestern towns after the strike against the rebel stronghold of Tal Afar in northern Iraq.
Dulaimi singled out the towns of Ramadi, Samarra, Rawa and Qaim as targets for future attacks against insurgents, but gave no indication of when the attacks might take place.
Zarqawi declared war on Shiss in Iraq on Wednesday in response to the Iraqi-US offensive in Tal Afar.
Baghdad and Washington have long said arms and insurgents are moving into Iraq from Syria, especially along the Euphrates, and spreading out from there to cities across Iraq.
Syria denies it but Iraq closed parts of the border on Sunday.
US aircraft struck insurgent targets in the town of Karabila, beside Qaim and near the Syrian border, more than 10 times on Tuesday, a hospital source said. Iraq’s Shia- and Kurdish-led government, and the occupying US troops which support it, are facing an insurgency from the country’s Sunni Arab minority.
Lynch said the insurgency was likely to become more violent in the run-up to an October 15 referendun on a draft constitution for Iraq, which Sunnis fear will institutionalise the loss of influence they have experienced since the US invasion of 2003 to oust President Saddam Hussein, himself a Sunni.
He added that the United States saw the insurgency as coming from three main sources: what he described as “terrorists and foreign fighters”; “Iraqi rejectionists,” or people who do not accept the US invasion; and “Saddamists”.
“We believe we are experiencing great success against the most crucial element of the insurgency, which is the terrorists and the foreign fighters,” Lynch said. “The face of that is Zarqawi and Al Qaeda in Iraq. We’re using all assets under our control in conjunction with the Iraqi security forces to find him and kill him.”
US military sources and analysts said yesterday that Al Zarqawi’s declaration of war against Shias is a mark of his despair following the heavy blows suffered by his Al Qaeda outfit.
“The increase (in attacks) we saw today and yesterday is an indication of their (Al Qaeda’s Iraq branch) desperation, because they know that they cannot defeat us militarily,” a US Central Command spokesman said from As Saliyah base in Qatar.                   – Agencies
Last update on: 16-9-2005