US convoy ambushed during search

By PATRICK COCKBURN in Balad

Guerrilla fighters ambushed an American convoy in a hostile region north of Baghdad yesterday, wounding several soldiers, as the United States Army stepped up search-and-destroy operations against fighters loyal to Saddam Hussein.

The ambush came as the US military launched Operation Desert Scorpion, aimed at rooting out Saddam loyalists - including suspected foreign fighters - after a spate of attacks that have killed more than 40 American soldiers since major combat was declared complete on May 1.

After yesterday's attack on the highway south of the town of Balad, a crippled American truck was left smouldering.

Apache helicopters buzzed overhead, searching for the attackers while tanks and armoured vehicles surrounded the truck.

Soldiers said several casualties had been evacuated.

The convoy was travelling from Baghdad to Balad, 96km to the north, when it came under attack.

As the US Army continued its sweep through central Iraq yesterday, sand-coloured tanks and armoured vehicles crowded the roads north of Baghdad in an attempt to stamp out Iraqi resistance.

The effort to disarm the Iraqis, who traditionally own weapons, is proving less than successful, with only 100 guns out of an estimated five million in the country being handed in under an amnesty that has just ended.

The lumbering American armoured columns, supported by helicopters, seem out of all proportion to the threat of attack.

At one moment yesterday the US Army was claiming to have detained 74 suspected members of al Qaeda south of Kirkuk, but later decided they had no connection with the organisation. Arrests are often made based on vague or tainted information.

In Baquba, a fruit-growing town 48km northwest of Baghdad, two queues had formed yesterday at the police station. One consisted of informers denouncing members of the former regime and the other of relatives of detainees trying to find out where they were being held.

"The problem is that anybody can tell the Americans that a man is an Ali Baba - a looter - just because they have some money," said Salman Shamar, who was trying to find two of his cousins at the 4th Infantry Division's base inside an old Iraqi airbase just outside the town.

American soldiers said he should inquire at the police station. He said he had just been there and had been told to go the base.

"We don't know what those idiots are doing over there at the police station," said an exasperated US soldier at the entrance to the base.

"We don't have a list of detainees here."

There are still people who sympathise with the old regime. On the wreckage of an Iraqi armoured vehicle beside the road somebody had painted the unappealing slogan: "Hell with Saddam is better than paradise with the Americans."

Unfortunately for Iraqis, life under US occupation is very far from paradise. As temperatures rose in Baghdad last weekend to close to 40 degrees, some districts of the city had just an hour of electricity each day as demand soared because of the use of air-conditioners.

The American military sweeps are accompanied by an episodic "hearts and minds" campaign orchestrated by the Army's Psychological Warfare Unit.

US soldiers handed out leaflets yesterday showing a picture of Iraqi children dutifully sweeping the streets under the watchful eye of an American Humvee armoured car.

Angry locals said US troops had ransacked houses and assaulted residents.

They said the operation would only serve to fuel hostility towards the US occupiers of Iraq.

The military said Operation Desert Scorpion aimed to win the confidence of local people as well as hunt guerrillas.


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Herald Feature: Iraq