U.S. military launches anti-insurgent offensive Iraq

HADITHA, Iraq -- Helicopters swept down near palm tree groves and armored vehicles roared into this Euphrates River city before dawn Wednesday as 1,000 U.S. troops launched the second major offensive in less than a month aimed at uprooting insurgents.\nFierce gunbattles broke out and six insurgents were killed in central Haditha, the U.S. military said, adding that another four were killed in separate clashes.\nMarines brought by helicopters blocked one side of Haditha, while other troops on foot and in armored vehicles established checkpoints and moved toward the city's center. U.S. warplanes circled overhead.\nTwo Marines were wounded and evacuated, Capt. Christopher Toland told an Associated Press reporter embedded with U.S. forces.\nAlso Wednesday, an Islamic \nmilitant Web site statement claimed that Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi has fled to an unidentified "neighboring country" with two Arab doctors treating him for gunshot wounds to his lung. The claim could not be authenticated and messages on another Web site quickly denounced it as untrue and unauthorized by the terror group.\nThe assault, called Operation New Market, focused on this city of about 90,000 people, where the U.S. military says fighters are using increasingly sophisticated tactics. Insurgents have killed more than 620 people since a new Iraqi government was announced on April 28.\nHaditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, lies along a major highway used by travelers moving from western Iraq to major cities such as Mosul and Baghdad in the central and northern parts of the country.\nEarlier this month, fighters operating from a Haditha hospital killed four U.S. troops in a well-coordinated ambush that included a suicide car bomber, a roadside bomb and gunfire. The hospital was partially destroyed in the attack.\nSeveral other attacks have \noccurred in Haditha this year, including the April 17 killing of a police chief and the discovery three days later of the bodies of 19 fishermen. U.S. military officials say it's unclear if the fishermen were killed in a tribal dispute or by insurgents.\n"Right now there's a larger threat than should be in Haditha and we're here to tell them that they're not welcome," said Lt. Col. Lionel Urquhart, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, which is part of the operation.\nU.S. officials said they hoped their presence would allow locals to feel safe enough to provide tips to the military.\n"The people out there know who wrecked the hospital and those who target their power source," said Urquhart, referring to the hydroelectric dam that is said to provide about a third of Iraq's electricity.\nA small reconnaissance unit of Iraqi soldiers was participating in the attack on the northwestern city, Urquhart said, but the offensive reflected the continued need for U.S. operations to clear out insurgents from Sunni-dominated areas of the country. Haditha has no functioning police force.\nMarines took over several homes, using them as observation and control centers while other troops fanned out through mainly empty streets in an attempt to flush out insurgents. At least one loud explosion rocked the city early Wednesday morning, but the source of the blast was not known.\n"A lot of this is like bird hunting. You rustle it up and see what comes up," said Marine Col. Stephen W. Davis, commander of the operation made of troops in Marine Regimental Combat Team 2.\nShortly before the U.S. assault began, insurgents fired a mortar at a dam facility where hundreds of Marines are based.\n"Hold on, we'll be there in a minute," yelled Marine Sgt. Shawn Bryan, of Albuquerque, N.M., assigned to the 3rd Marine Battalion, from a platform on the dam as Marines scrambled into vehicles to try to locate the attackers.\nEarlier this month, American forces conducted a weeklong operation in the city of Qaim and other Iraqi towns near the Syrian border aimed at rooting out militants allied to al-Zarqawi and destroying their smuggling routes into Syria. At least 125 militants were killed in that operation, along with nine U.S. Marines, the military said.\nSyria is under intense pressure from the United States and the Iraqi government to stop foreign fighters from entering Iraq across their porous 380-mile border.\n"There are responsibilities of the Syrian government to hamper and prevent this flow of terrorists from coming across," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said at a joint news conference with visiting Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini.\nViolence continued elsewhere Wednesday, a day after four U.S. soldiers were killed, pushing the number of U.S. troops killed in four days to 14, part of a surge in attacks that also have killed about 60 Iraqis.\nA roadside bomb exploded next to a U.S. patrol in Baghdad, wounding one American soldier, U.S. military and police officials said.\nA suicide car bomber also blew himself up but missed a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad, police Capt. Firas Ghaiti said. The attack left one civilian dead and four wounded.\nGunmen killed Iraqi army Capt. Ali Abdul-Amir as he left his house in the town of Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, army Col. Abdullah al-Shammari said.\nIn Mosul, Col. Mukhlef Moussa of the Facility Protection Service, a U.S.-trained civilian guard force, was shot to death as he walked on the campus of Mosul University, Brig. Gen. Wathiq Mohammed said.\nIn Dahuk, 250 miles northwest of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed a traffic policeman and wounded 10 people, including seven policemen, police Col. Nazim Silevani said.\nSunni and Shiite clerics and politicians also have been intensifying efforts to find a way out of a sectarian crisis that threatens a civil war. Sunnis opposed to the new government are thought to make up the insurgency's core, and some Sunni extremists have been attacking Shiites.\nAbout 3,000 Iraqi Shiite Muslim protesters staged a noisy demonstration Wednesday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, to denounce recent comments made by a prominent Sunni leader who accused a Shiite militia of killing Sunni clerics.\nThe claim that al-Zarqawi had fled the country came a day after a message in the name of al-Qaida in Iraq appeared on another Web site, saying the Jordanian-born militant was wounded. U.S. officials cautioned they did not know if that posting was authentic and privately said the information also may have been designed to mislead on purpose.\nAlso Wednesday, the Iraqi government said security forces have killed Sabhan Ahmad Ramadan, a senior al-Zarqawi aide in northern Iraq.