Insurgents unleashed attacks in six Iraqi cities Thursday, killing at least 100 people and wounding 320 in one of the deadliest outbreaks of violence since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year.
The apparently coordinated assaults appeared to be directed primarily at Iraqi security forces working with the U.S.-led coalition. The northern city of Mosul was hit hardest; 62 people died and 220 were injured in car bomb explosions at the city’s police academy, two police stations and a hospital, according to Arab news media.
Police stations in Baghdad, Ramadi, Baqouba and a small village south of Baghdad, Mahaweel, also were attacked, and heavy fighting broke out in Fallujah.
The fiercest fighting occurred in Baqouba, where insurgents seized two police stations, stormed a government building and burned down the house of a provincial police chief. Witnesses said guerrillas were seen freely walking the streets armed with rocket launchers.
U.S. forces launched laser-guided missile strikes on houses near a soccer stadium where insurgents were targeting American troops with small-arms fire.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed in the fighting in Baqouba. A third was killed during the violence in Mosul.
By afternoon, U.S. and Iraqi security forces appeared to have Baqouba under control. Prime Minister Iyad Allawi called the violence “disruptions caused by cowards. It shows what kind of criminals and infidels we’re facing.”
Insurgents also launched attacks in Fallujah, the volatile Sunni city that U.S. military leaders think has been used as a base of operations by Al Qaeda-linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his network.
The fighting in Fallujah marked the first major violence there since April, when Marines engaged in heavy fighting to find those responsible for the killing and mutilation of four American contractors.
With the formal hand-over of sovereignty to Iraqis just six days away, the U.S.-led coalition has been warning that insurgents are likely to step up their attacks to create chaos during the crucial transition period.
“The effect they are trying to achieve is not to take over the country but to intimidate the people, to break the will of the people and push them off the path of sovereignty,” said U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a coalition military spokesman. “And they will fail.”
Unlike other recent insurgent attacks, Thursday’s violence appeared to be synchronized, conducted across a 240-mile swath of Iraq and executed with a variety of weapons, from car bombs and rocket-propelled grenades to small arms.
Insurgents also focused heavily on Iraqi police, who have complained repeatedly that they do not have the firepower to fend off attacks by militants with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Four police stations were attacked in Baghdad alone Thursday, and several Iraqi police officials said this week that their only defense against such attacks is their assault rifles.
“The Iraqi police don’t have enough weapons,” Othman al-Rawi, planning director for Anbar province, told Radio Sawa. “These terrorist groups have a goal, which is to destabilize the security situation and make the new regime fall, while the Iraqi police have no goal except a paycheck.”
There were several signs that al-Zarqawi’s network was involved in some of the attacks. The Arab television network Al-Arabiya quoted a statement allegedly sent out by al-Zarqawi’s network that claimed responsibility for the violence in Baqouba, Mosul and Ramadi. Iraqis in Baqouba said al-Zarqawi’s network had distributed leaflets throughout the city warning residents to stay home Thursday.
U.S. military officials believe al-Zarqawi has been behind a string of suicide car bombings and other attacks in Iraq that have killed scores of Iraqis. The Jordanian-born militant also is believed to be responsible for the decapitation killings of American Nicholas Berg in May and a South Korean translator this week.
The fighting in Baqouba began at 5:30 a.m., when insurgents attacked a government building in the city’s downtown district with rocket-propelled grenades, gunfire and mortar fire, a coalition military spokesman said.
Ten minutes later, about 30 insurgents attacked the Mufraq police station with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire. Witnesses said they overran the station, freed its prisoners and later blew up the building. A second group of insurgents clashed with U.S. troops in the neighborhood surrounding the city’s stadium.
Witnesses said that during the fighting, black-masked insurgents roamed the streets, killing Iraqis they suspected of collaborating with U.S. troops. Uday Khudair said he saw a group of insurgents order the evacuation of a building housing a Danish organization. When security guards refused, “the insurgents hit the building with RPGs, which set the building on fire, and killed two of the guards.”
In Ramadi, insurgents dressed in black and wearing masks attacked two police stations with rocket-propelled grenades, The Associated Press reported. Seven people were killed and 13 were injured.
It was unclear how the fighting began in Fallujah early Thursday. However, U.S. military officials said Marines and members of Iraq’s Fallujah Brigade worked together to quell insurgent attacks in the Sunni stronghold city, about 35 miles west of Baghdad.
During the fighting, a Marine attack helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing, according to a statement from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. No one was hurt; the statement did not explain why the helicopter had to land.
By early afternoon Thursday, the main highway from Fallujah to Baghdad was clogged with cars and trucks piled with fleeing families and their belongings. Several mini-buses packed with women and their children raced east toward the capital, using back roads to avoid checkpoints and blocked roads on the edge of Fallujah.
Black smoke rose above two ruined houses as helicopters circled overhead, and M-1 tanks were positioned along the northern and eastern edges of the city.
Majid al-Falahi, a 48-year-old father of seven, put his family into a mini-bus stuffed with their luggage, blankets and mattresses and fled the fighting Thursday. Referring to the three-week siege of the city by Marines in April that left scores of Iraqis dead, al-Falahi said, “We decided to leave the city because we are afraid that the same thing will happen like the last time.”
