More Attacks Like This, Please
Insurgents take troops by sandstorm! Exclamation mark mine, as the Sydney Morning Herald, irrationally exuberant, apparently forgot to add one when it was busy missing the point:
Insurgents take troops by sandstorm
AUSTRALIAN soldiers in Iraq have come under heavy rocket fire in Baghdad’s green zone after sandstorms sent blankets of dust across the city and provided cover for insurgents.
By the end of a day of battles in north-eastern Baghdad, the United States military said yesterday it had killed 38 insurgent fighters.
The attacks, which appeared to be some of the biggest clashes in weeks, showed that some rogue fighters have defied an order by an anti-American Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, to observe a ceasefire.
To their detriment, apparently. I’m not exactly getting the “take troops” part. Here the LA Times reports the daring attack under cover of sand caused no casualties in the Green Zone, but some wild rounds apparently killed innocent Iraqis.
BAGHDAD — Under the cover of a thick sandstorm Sunday, suspected Shiite militiamen unleashed a barrage of rocket or mortar fire at Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and attacked U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.
The U.S. military said this morning that its forces had killed at least 38 gunmen in a series of clashes since Sunday, some of the fiercest fighting in days in Shiite-dominated parts of the capital.
They included 22 fighters killed with tank and gun fire, when a large group swarmed a checkpoint manned by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers Sunday, the military said in a statement. At least one other checkpoint, a combat outpost and several patrols were also attacked with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the military said.
Hospital officials in Sadr City, the vast Shiite district that has been the focus of recent fighting, said they had received 24 dead and more than 100 wounded since 8 a.m. Sunday. The victims included women and children, they said. The hospitals regard all patients as civilians unless they arrive in military uniform, making it impossible to determine how many of the victims may have been fighters.
At least two other Iraqis were killed Sunday and 25 wounded by shells that apparently missed the Green Zone and landed in surrounding neighborhoods, police said. There were no reports of casualties inside the enclave, which houses the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government offices.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:42 am on Monday, April 28, 2008
4 Responses to “More Attacks Like This, Please”
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April 28th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Another tremendous jihadi “victory”, done with the usual… erm… “grace and style”.
April 28th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
You can run, but you’ll just die tired.
April 28th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Maybe they just left out the word “on”, as in “Insurgents take on troops by sandstorm.” In which case, they also forgot to include ” - and lose.”
April 28th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
On a far less important note, I’m glad to see someone fixed the headline from print version of this article.
http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1089800
There is a huge difference between CO and CO2. CO2 was in the print edition.
Gary