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| A-1-8 Chapter of the 4th Infantry Division |
Active Unit News
GIs Conduct Door-to-Door Raids in Samarra
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
SAMARRA, Iraq — Backed by armored vehicles and Apache helicopters, U.S. troops conducted door-to-door searches during a massive, pre-dawn raid Wednesday that was designed to stamp out guerrilla resistance in the restive town of Samarra. At least a dozen people were detained.
The 4th Infantry Division, based in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, launched Operation Ivy Blizzard (search) before dawn following an earlier raid in the area in which U.S. soldiers snared a suspected rebel leader and 78 other people.
Insurgents in and around Samarra, a predominantly Sunni (search) town of 200,000 north of Baghdad, repeatedly have ambushed U.S. troops, and anti-U.S. resentment persists after Saddam's capture on Saturday.
The most wanted fugitive on the U.S. list is now Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri (search), a high-ranking member of Saddam's former regime who is thought to be organizing anti-U.S. attacks. It is unclear whether U.S. officials believe al-Douri is in the Samarra area.
The military said it didn't find all the suspects it was seeking.
"Samarra has been a little bit of a thorn in our side," said U.S. Army Col. Nate Sassaman. "It hasn't come along as quickly as other cities in the rebuilding of Iraq. This operation is designed to bring them up to speed."
"There aren't too many hotspots left in the Sunni Triangle, but Samarra is one of them," Sassaman said. The Sunni Triangle is the area north and west of Baghdad where pro-Saddam sentiment is strongest. It includes the towns of Ramadi and Fallujah, where his loyalists have rioted in the past few days.
Sassaman said troops in Samarra seized four rocket-propelled grenade launchers and a dozen assault rifles, as well as bomb-making material.
U.S. soldiers blew open some gates and doors with demolition charges, and the sound of explosions mixed with screams of women inside houses. At one point, there was a short exchange of gunfire, but it was not immediately clear what happened.
An explosion shattered glass in the windows at one house, and a baby was cut in the face. U.S. medics treated the injury while other soldiers handcuffed four men who were later determined not to be suspects. At another home, an explosion ignited a small fire.
Elsewhere, a suspect was punched in the head and a soldier said: "You're dead. You're dead."
The troops used global positioning satellite devices to locate marked targets. They searched the industrial area in Samarra, breaking into workshops but finding relatively little. One military official said he suspected insurgents have moved much of their equipment to farms outside town.
Lt. Jack Saville said suspects had been tipped off about the raid, either by Iraqis working on the U.S. base or by Samarra residents who noticed a large massing of military vehicles in recent days.
Sassaman's deputy, Capt. Matthew Cunningham, said Samarra has a core of about 1,500 fighters.
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