US soldiers swept through towns and villages west of Baghdad after dawn Monday, detaining several suspected resistance operatives and searching for weapons.
According to AP, it was the second day of a massive operation called Desert Scorpion. It followed the expiration on Sunday of an amnesty program for people turning in heavy weapons.
Families of those arrested warned resistance would only intensify.
Meanwhile, a U.S. Central Command spokesman denied reports that U.S. troops were wounded in an ambush on a military vehicle near the town of Balad north of Baghdad.
Lt. Ryan Fitzgerald said initial accounts indicated a vehicle caught fire due to "mechanical failure."
However, a U.S. military spokesman said Monday ambushers fired rocket-propelled grenades at two U.S. military convoys Sunday, in separate attacks that wounded at least four Americans, two of them seriously.
In the first attack, a grenade hit a civilian Iraqi bus that was passing a 4th Infantry Division convoy near the town of Mushahidah, about 15 miles north of Baghdad. A U.S. military statement said the number of casualties on the bus were unknown.
At least two Americans were seriously wounded in that attack, said Capt. John Morgan, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
Also Sunday, assailants fired rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S. military convoy near Dujayl, a town 35 miles north of Baghdad, lightly wounding two soldiers, Morgan said.
"The convoy returned fire, and the attackers fled the area. A quick reactionary force was dispatched to provide security for the convoy and pursue the attackers," the Centcom statement said.
Elsewhere, backed by helicopters, more than 100 military police and infantrymen in 30 Humvees and four Bradley fighting vehicles poured into the small town of Khaldiyah, some 70 kilometers west of Baghdad. They targeted six homes and took away nine men.
On the outskirts of Ramadi, less than 30 kilometers farther west, US forces detained four brothers from one home and two brothers from a neighboring family.
In the Ramadi area, the families were still asleep when the armored column moved into their village at 5:15 a.m..
Troops bound men and women in the two houses with plastic handcuffs and moved them into a nearby field while they searched the homes, residents said. They found one rifle, AP reported.
In Khaldiyah, U.S. commanders said they were acting on a tip from an Iraqi man captured after he and two other men fired rocket-propelled grenades Saturday night at a routine U.S. patrol near an abandoned Iraqi ammunition dump. The other two men escaped and the prisoner pointed to two homes he said the operatives had been using as a hideout.
When military police entered the homes, they found only families and a few hundred rounds of pistol and assault rifle ammunition buried in the backyard of one of them.
Commenting on the results of the current raids, Capt. Chris Carter, an infantry commander, was quoted as saying "I didn't think we'd find anything, I figured the bad guys would have left by now." "But it shows the people here that we are willing and able to do this kind of thing if we need to." (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
