Big bada boom in Fallujah

[Renegade7]

Didn't see it posted yet. Don't want to fan any flames but I just want to ask one question: WHAT TOOK SO LONG?

It's four pages, so to save space I just posted the first page.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56942-2004Apr7.html

U.S. Air Strike Hits Mosque in Fallujah

Attack Approved After Five Marines Shot From the Mosque

By Pamela Constable and William Branigin

Washington Post Staff Writers

Wednesday, April 7, 2004; 5:10 PM

FALLUJAH, Iraq, April 7--U.S. Marines called in an air strike on a mosque compound that was being used as a firing position by Sunni insurgents here Wednesday, as forces of a U.S.-led coalition battled a growing, separate rebellion by Shiite Muslims in Baghdad and southern Iraq.

The mosque compound in this flashpoint city was targeted after advancing Marines took fire from insurgents holed up inside it for several hours, Marines said. The fighting began when a rocket-propelled grenade fired from inside the compound hit a military vehicle, wounding five Marines, a military spokesman told reporters.

According to Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, a Cobra helicopter fired a Hellfire missile at the base of the mosque's minaret and an F-16 fighter-bomber dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb on the compound wall.

The number of casualties from the air strike was not immediately clear. News agencies quoted witnesses in Fallujah as saying the strike killed at least two dozen people who had been inside the mosque compound, but no confirmation was available.

A press release distributed by the U.S. Central Command said one insurgent was killed in the air strike. "There is no report of civilian casualties," it said.

The release said the Abdul Aziz Kubaysi mosque complex (news agencies had identified it as the Abdul-Aziz Samarrai mosque) "lost its protected status" and became a lawful military target because insurgents had used it to conduct offensive military operations.

"Initial reports indicate a platoon-size force was firing RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and small arms from fortified battle positions inside of and on top of the mosque," the statement said. It said Marines "used air support to breach a wall located several hundred yards away from the actual mosque structure" and that no damage to the mosque itself was observed. After entering the compound, Marines recovered a "fully functional mortar," the statement said.

In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, said that although the mosque compound was "a holy place" protected by the Geneva Convention, "it can be attacked when there is a military necessity brought on by the fact that the enemy is storing weapons, using weapons, inciting violence and executing violence from its grounds."

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the United States would not allow "the enemies of a free Iraq to undermine the movement toward a better future." He described the Sunni insurgents and the followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr as "thugs and assassins" whose numbers were relatively small. He said Sadr's followers in his militia, called the Mahdi Army, number between 1,000 and 6,000.

In a statement issued from his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Sadr called on Americans to oppose their government's actions in Iraq and ensure a transfer of power to "honest Iraqis" not associated with the U.S. occupation authority. "Otherwise, Iraq will be another Vietnam for America and the occupiers," he warned.

Despite the spreading violence, Rumsfeld denied that the situation in Iraq was "out of control." But he indicated that troops that had been scheduled to return home from Iraq could be ordered to remain there for some time to take advantage of an unusually large number of U.S. forces -- about 135,000 at present -- who are now in the country because of an overlap between those arriving and those leaving.

Rumsfeld's Pentagon briefing came after the U.S. military in Iraq announced the deaths of two more U.S. soldiers, one killed in Balad north of the capital on Tuesday and the other slain Wednesday in Baghdad in an attack on his convoy.

Since Sunday, news agencies reported, 34 Americans, two other coalition soldiers and nearly 200 Iraqis have been killed in fighting across the country.

Rumsfeld said that in Fallujah, Marines had captured at least nine people on a list of targets, including persons involved in the killing a week ago of four U.S. civilian security contractors.

[chomerics]

It's about freaking time.