Sounds like the "rat's nest" of Fallujah will see major action soon and the Marines are ready.
Iraq's government yesterday offered the leaders of rebel-held Fallujah a "last" chance to negotiate as an American military commander described the city as a cancer that had to be dealt with.Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister, indicated that time was fast running out for those who were harbouring insurgents there. "This chance could be the last," he said in a statement, imploring "the leaders and notables of Fallujah to use it to find a political solution".
But with military preparations at an advanced stage and American officials suggesting a major offensive could begin next week, there appeared little hope of a deal.
"Fallujah is a cancer," said Maj Gen Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division, who would lead any ground attack. "We can't have a sanctuary for the enemy and expect to make progress."
He said he had received no request from the Iraqi government to carry out military operations and offered no opinion on whether a peaceful solution was possible. "I don't know who they're negotiating with."
But he made clear that his men were ready for action in Fallujah. "It's a rats' nest but if we have to go in and clear it out we will." He urged the foreign elements in Fallujah and those loyal to Saddam Hussein's regime to come out and fight.
"We can take these guys on if they show their faces. Not a problem whatsoever. That's why they've resorted to the tactics they have [suicide bombings and landmines] because they know every time we face them we kill them."
Speaking in his headquarters at Ramadi, 30 miles west of Fallujah, he said the insurgents appeared to be preparing for battle. "There's some indications they are fortifying." Intelligence reports have suggested that elaborate booby traps have been laid.
Internal Iraqi pressures may well be contributing to the timing, including the fact that the recently massacred Iraqi National Guard trainees were primarily southern Shi'ites, according to Zeyad at Healing Iraq.
The soldiers were reportedly unarmed, dressed in civilian clothes and returning home on a bus from a training camp in Karakush. They were found systematically shot in the head with their hands tied in groups of 12 on the main road of Baladruz-Mandali-Badrah. Most of the soldiers were from the Wasit (Kut), Thi Qar (Nasiriya) and Maysan (Ammara) governorates, which prompted several (Shi'ite) tribal Sheikhs from these areas to issue threats of a large scale armed assault against (Sunni) tribes west of Baghdad to avenge the slain soldiers.Sheikh Hassan Hatem Al-Ghadhban of the Bani Lam tribes in Kut and Ammara strongly warned tribes west of Baghdad from the consequences of providing aid and refuge to terrorists. He also mentioned that southern Iraqi tribes can easily mobilise an army of tribesmen to overrun Yusifiya, Mahmudiya and Fallujah, and that neither multinational forces nor the interim government can stop them from carrying out this threat. Another Sheikh from Bani Lam said that he can do nothing to prevent his angry tribesmen from taking revenge for their brothers and sons, while a spokesman for the Congregation of Southern Tribes, a Sheikh from the Rubaiy'a tribes in Kut, called on the government to intervene and put an end to these massacres or they would be forced to act by themselves.
This is the third time in 5 months that southern Iraqi tribes threaten military action against Fallujah and surrounding areas.
The pot is boiling.
Posted by Alan at October 29, 2004 12:55 AM