A pattern of skillfully executed assaults on U.S. troops has led U.S. authorities to believe they are facing more than chaotic violence and street crime. Baath Party members, Republican Guard soldiers, and paramilitary fighters have coalesced into small groups bent on undermining U.S. efforts at reconstruction, Bush administration officials say. With hundreds of infantrymen supported by helicopter gunships and armored vehicles, U.S. forces in the past two weeks have swept through neighborhoods and villages north of Baghdad dominated by Sunni Muslims, searching for weapons caches and rounding up thousands of suspects. While most resistance fighters are thought to be Iraqis, some are from outside Iraq - "sort of guest-worker jihadists who came in during the war and are not going back to where they came from until they are either killed or captured," said Pentagon official Joseph Collins. (Washington Post)
2003-06-18 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive