NY Daily News June 25, 2004
Slaughter, chaos in Iraq
100 are killed in six-city blitz
By Chrisopher Allbritton in Baghdad and Maki Becker in New York
In a terrifying blitz of assaults and suicide bombings, insurgents launched near-simultaneous attacks in six Iraqi cities yesterday, killing more than 100 people - including three U.S. soldiers.
The violence was directed primarily at Iraqi police stations and was clearly aimed at creating an atmosphere of chaos and fear before the handover of power to the interim Iraqi government in five days.
"We don't think this was an exception; we think we're going to see more of this," a senior coalition military official told reporters. "There's no reason to expect it will stop after June 30."
The wave of attacks that swept across the notorious Sunni Triangle and the northern city of Mosul featured suicide car bombings designed to kill Iraqi police officers and destroy police stations, but insurgents also attacked convoys, checkpoints and a governor's house. Some of the fighters were dressed all in black with yellow headbands, indicating their allegiance to terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
American helicopters, jet fighters and troops rushed to the aid of outgunned and overwhelmed Iraqi police, and had to resort to 500-pound bombs and at least one massive 2,000-pound bomb to beat back the offensive, officials said.
In the hotbed town of Fallujah, witnesses said Iraqi cops and insurgents were cooperating, even as American troops traded heavy gunfire with insurgents.
Zarqawi's group claimed credit for the onslaught, but interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi blamed the violence on both Zarqawi's followers and remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime - an ominous combination.
In Baqubah, fighters distributed leaflets to Iraqis warning them against cooperating with the U.S. "The flesh of collaborators is tastier than that of Americans," they read.
The attacks left streets in the besieged cities empty and rattled much of the country, including Baghdad. Westerners were told to stock up on supplies and stay off the streets for the next seven days for fear of assassination or kidnapping. The air over the city was filled with the clatter of American attack helicopters, and rumors of impending strikes unnerved much of the city.
Retired Col. Charles Krohn, who was assigned to Baghdad at the beginning of the occupation, said the coordinated attacks showed "that the terrorists are increasing in potency. ... It shows they're well-trained and that they are motivated and they're able to get close to the target."
He said the U.S.-led coalition will have to impose martial law, including a nationwide curfew and strict travel restrictions, to quell the violence.
"What they're doing is not hard to do," said John Pike, director of military think tank GlobalSecurity.org, about the insurgency. "That's the bad news," he said. "But the good news is that this is not the Tet offensive," referring to the Viet Cong uprising in the Vietnam War. "There were hundreds of thousands of Viet Cong. In Iraq, it's thousands."
With News Wire Services
© Copyright 2004, Daily News, L.P.
