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U.S. launches air attacks in new tactic

By Atul Aneja

MANAMA Nov. 8. A day after downing a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter, Iraqi resistance forces killed two more American troops on Saturday even as the occupation forces took recourse to air power to counter the growing opposition to its presence.

A roadside bomb killed two U.S. soldiers, who were part of a convoy in the flashpoint town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, the U.S. military command said. The total U.S. death roll after the incident reached 149 after Washington's declaration on May 1 that major combat operations in Iraq were over.

Ending the controversy surrounding the cause of Friday's helicopter crash, which killed six soldiers, U.S. military sources said the chopper had been brought down by Iraqi ground fire. The U.S. occupation forces have lost three helicopters in two weeks, and a record number of 32 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq during the week. A rocket-propelled grenade hit a Black Hawk helicopter on October 25 and a surface-to-air missile brought down a Chinook helicopter last Sunday, killing 16 troops.

Faced with the growing Iraqi resistance, the U.S. military, shifting its tactics after Friday's helicopter crash, began increasing the use of its airpower today. F-16 fighter planes bombed targets near Tikrit, 175 km north of Baghdad, and ground troops, supported by Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, blew up several houses, which the U.S. military suspected were being used by resistance fighters. American fighter jets dropped several 500-pound bombs close to the chopper crash site, before ground forces launched their attack using heavy weapons. The occupation forces have rarely used fighter planes to combat the Iraqi resistance after May 1. Tikrit, the hometown of the former President, Saddam Hussein, has been one of the hubs of the resistance.

In another blow to U.S. efforts to sustain its control over Iraq, Turkey has formally announced that it would not be sending its troops to supplement the Anglo-American forces.

Iraqi Kurds and Arab nationalists in Iraq had rejected the proposal for the deployment of a 10,000-strong Turkish military force in Iraq, as it triggered unhappy memories of 400 years of Ottoman rule in the country till World War 1. The deployment of Turkish troops could have also set a precedent for intervention in Iraq by other neighbouring countries.

Red Cross shuts offices

Meanwhile, disregarding exhortations by the U.S. to stay, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has decided to shut down its offices in Baghdad and the southern Iraqi city of Basra indefinitely.

The Red Cross had already pulled out a large portion of its foreign staff after a suicide car bombing of its headquarters late last month.

The ICRC president, Jacob Kellenberger, was quoted as saying that the group had decided not to work in Iraq under military protection, as it compromises its concept of independent humanitarian action.

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