Sunday, November 07, 2004
Iraq Declares Martial Law Amid Surge of Violence U.S. Command Seals Off Fallujah in 'Final Preparations' for Assault
By Karl VickWashington Post Foreign ServiceSunday, November 7, 2004; 3:03 PM
BAGHDAD, Nov. 7 -- Iraq's interim government announced a state of emergency on Sunday, imposing martial law on a country braced for a massive U.S. military assault on the city of Fallujah.
The order, read before cameras by a spokesman for interim prime minister Ayad Allawi heightened a sense of crisis in Iraq and fueled fears that an offensive on Fallujah would unleash counterattacks that insurgents appeared to have already begun elsewhere in the country.
The U.S. command announced it had sealed off Fallujah and was "finishing final preparations for an assault" on the city, the Associated Press reported.
Later in the day, Allawi, in a brief meeting with reporters, said the emergency law will be implemented "whenever and wherever is necessary."
He called the measure "a very powerful message that we are serious" about curbing violence before January's scheduled elections. "We want the elections to take place. We want to secure the country so elections can be done in a peaceful way and the Iraqi people can participate ... freely, without the intimidation by terrorists and by forces who are trying to wreck the political process in Iraq. "....I hope the terrorists get [the message] because we are not going to be easy on them."
Sunday brought news of a massed insurgent attack on police stations and the killing of 21 police officers in Haditha and Haqlaniya, two towns west of Fallujah. The twin attacks, carried out by fighters who included Arab foreigners, followed a flurry of car bomb and mortar attacks Saturday that left more than 30 people dead in Samarra about 60 miles north of Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi forces had reclaimed Samarra from rebels last month in an operation that was cast as a model for the attack on Fallujah.
In some of the latest violence south of Baghdad, 21 young Iraqi men were killed Saturday and Sunday while returning to their homes in Najaf after having traveled to the capital to join the Iraqi National Guard, said Najaf police chief Ghalib Hashem Jazaari. Gunmen killed 13 of the recruits Saturday and eight others Sunday as they were passing through the town of Latifiya, a hotbed for insurgents, Jazaari said. He said the killers apparently had been tipped to the recruits' travel by informants in the guard recruiting office.
In other attacks Sunday, a car bomb exploded outside the Baghdad home of the interim finance minister, killing a guard, and another car bomb targeted a U.S. military convoy near the capital's airport, leaving one U.S. soldier dead and another wounded. In addition, two provincial officials were assassinated south of the capital while traveling to the funeral of a third.
"We have decided to declare a state of emergency in all areas of Iraq, with the exception of the region of Kurdistan for a period of 60 days," Allawi spokesman Thaer Naqeeb announced in early afternoon Baghdad time, citing the transitional law put in place during the U.S. occupation that expired in June.
Kasim Daoud, Iraq's minister of state and national security adviser, said the government has "the power to extend the state of emergency for three months until the elections if there is no improvement," according to the Associated Press.
Naqeeb said Allawi would provide details at a Monday news conference. Technically, the state of emergency would give the government broad powers to impose curfews, restrict movement and make arrests. But Allawi's interim government has struggled to secure basic control over large sections of Iraq, and U.S. forces routinely operate on their own, making arrests and engaging in firefights independent of civil authorities.
"This will increase the violence," said Mohammed Bashar Faidhi, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Clerics, which represents some 3,000 Sunni Muslim clergy in Iraq and has been a leading voice for the resistance. "The government is like a man walking in the dark who wants to avoid a small hole and falls into a big hole," he said.
"At this point the government can't even protect itself," Faidhi said. "How can it impose a state of emergency? Allawi, when he travels, half of the American army accompanies him!"
Meanwhile, some 10,000 U.S. Marines and Army troops and newly trained Iraqi infantrymen massed for a threatened assault on Fallujah, a city of 300,000 controlled by insurgents and foreign fighters since April. Senior Marine officers gathered troops for pep talks, invoking the memory of previous Marine urban assaults.
Allawi declined to say whether he had yet authorized an attack on Fallujah. "The window is closing, absolutely," he said. "We can't wait indefinitely. We have made our case very clear, that we have nothing with the people of Fallujah. On the contrary, the people of Fallujah have been asking us to really intervene as fast as we can and to salvage the people. They have been taken hostage by a bunch of terrorists and bandits and insurgents who were part of the old regime. They had been involved in atrocities when Saddam [Hussein, the ousted Iraqi leader] was around. Our government is determined to safeguard the Iraqi people."
Naqeeb's statement announcing the state of emergency blamed, in part, "the continuation of a pattern of violence and terrorism and the daily operations of mass murder" committed by "terrorist intruder groups." The violence, he said, was part of "their persistent attempt to paralyze the state's activities" and destroy Iraq's infrastructure. The government, Naqeeb said, "has exhausted all possible means" to solve the problem peacefully.
In some of the latest violence, a car bomb exploded Sunday near the home of Iraq's finance minister, Adil Abdel-Mahdi, killing one of his guards. The minister himself escaped injury, officials said.
One U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded in two attacks on military convoys in and around Baghdad, the military reported. No other details were immediately provided.
In Haditha, some 30 insurgents mounted a coordinated assault on the city's police headquarters that started at 9 p.m. Saturday and lasted three hours.
"First of all, we were attacked by mortars," said Lt. Muneef Abdullah. "Then the armed men came and started shooting and throwing hand grenades. When we tried to defend ourselves, they started launching RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] at us."
He added, "We called the Americans to come and help us, but unfortunately they took three hours, as if they were coming to a wedding."
Other accounts of the attacks on the police stations in western Anbar province, which includes Fallujah, said that some of the Iraqi police were killed execution-style after being captured. The AP said at least seven policemen were lined up and shot after a gun battle in Haditha about 135 miles northwest of Baghdad.
According to Reuters news agency, the attackers in Haditha took 21 captured Iraqi policemen to an oil-pumping station and shot them to death in cold blood.
Last month, insurgents massacred 49 unarmed Iraqi army recruits after capturing them on a road northeast of Baghdad. A group led by Jordanian insurgent Abu Musab Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the killings.
The group also claimed in a message posted on the Internet that it was behind attacks Saturday in Samarra in which more than 30 people, most of them Iraqi policemen, were killed. Attackers stormed an Iraqi police station and set off at least two suicide car bombs in those attacks.
Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf, Iraq, and staff writer William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
By Karl VickWashington Post Foreign ServiceSunday, November 7, 2004; 3:03 PM
BAGHDAD, Nov. 7 -- Iraq's interim government announced a state of emergency on Sunday, imposing martial law on a country braced for a massive U.S. military assault on the city of Fallujah.
The order, read before cameras by a spokesman for interim prime minister Ayad Allawi heightened a sense of crisis in Iraq and fueled fears that an offensive on Fallujah would unleash counterattacks that insurgents appeared to have already begun elsewhere in the country.
The U.S. command announced it had sealed off Fallujah and was "finishing final preparations for an assault" on the city, the Associated Press reported.
Later in the day, Allawi, in a brief meeting with reporters, said the emergency law will be implemented "whenever and wherever is necessary."
He called the measure "a very powerful message that we are serious" about curbing violence before January's scheduled elections. "We want the elections to take place. We want to secure the country so elections can be done in a peaceful way and the Iraqi people can participate ... freely, without the intimidation by terrorists and by forces who are trying to wreck the political process in Iraq. "....I hope the terrorists get [the message] because we are not going to be easy on them."
Sunday brought news of a massed insurgent attack on police stations and the killing of 21 police officers in Haditha and Haqlaniya, two towns west of Fallujah. The twin attacks, carried out by fighters who included Arab foreigners, followed a flurry of car bomb and mortar attacks Saturday that left more than 30 people dead in Samarra about 60 miles north of Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi forces had reclaimed Samarra from rebels last month in an operation that was cast as a model for the attack on Fallujah.
In some of the latest violence south of Baghdad, 21 young Iraqi men were killed Saturday and Sunday while returning to their homes in Najaf after having traveled to the capital to join the Iraqi National Guard, said Najaf police chief Ghalib Hashem Jazaari. Gunmen killed 13 of the recruits Saturday and eight others Sunday as they were passing through the town of Latifiya, a hotbed for insurgents, Jazaari said. He said the killers apparently had been tipped to the recruits' travel by informants in the guard recruiting office.
In other attacks Sunday, a car bomb exploded outside the Baghdad home of the interim finance minister, killing a guard, and another car bomb targeted a U.S. military convoy near the capital's airport, leaving one U.S. soldier dead and another wounded. In addition, two provincial officials were assassinated south of the capital while traveling to the funeral of a third.
"We have decided to declare a state of emergency in all areas of Iraq, with the exception of the region of Kurdistan for a period of 60 days," Allawi spokesman Thaer Naqeeb announced in early afternoon Baghdad time, citing the transitional law put in place during the U.S. occupation that expired in June.
Kasim Daoud, Iraq's minister of state and national security adviser, said the government has "the power to extend the state of emergency for three months until the elections if there is no improvement," according to the Associated Press.
Naqeeb said Allawi would provide details at a Monday news conference. Technically, the state of emergency would give the government broad powers to impose curfews, restrict movement and make arrests. But Allawi's interim government has struggled to secure basic control over large sections of Iraq, and U.S. forces routinely operate on their own, making arrests and engaging in firefights independent of civil authorities.
"This will increase the violence," said Mohammed Bashar Faidhi, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Clerics, which represents some 3,000 Sunni Muslim clergy in Iraq and has been a leading voice for the resistance. "The government is like a man walking in the dark who wants to avoid a small hole and falls into a big hole," he said.
"At this point the government can't even protect itself," Faidhi said. "How can it impose a state of emergency? Allawi, when he travels, half of the American army accompanies him!"
Meanwhile, some 10,000 U.S. Marines and Army troops and newly trained Iraqi infantrymen massed for a threatened assault on Fallujah, a city of 300,000 controlled by insurgents and foreign fighters since April. Senior Marine officers gathered troops for pep talks, invoking the memory of previous Marine urban assaults.
Allawi declined to say whether he had yet authorized an attack on Fallujah. "The window is closing, absolutely," he said. "We can't wait indefinitely. We have made our case very clear, that we have nothing with the people of Fallujah. On the contrary, the people of Fallujah have been asking us to really intervene as fast as we can and to salvage the people. They have been taken hostage by a bunch of terrorists and bandits and insurgents who were part of the old regime. They had been involved in atrocities when Saddam [Hussein, the ousted Iraqi leader] was around. Our government is determined to safeguard the Iraqi people."
Naqeeb's statement announcing the state of emergency blamed, in part, "the continuation of a pattern of violence and terrorism and the daily operations of mass murder" committed by "terrorist intruder groups." The violence, he said, was part of "their persistent attempt to paralyze the state's activities" and destroy Iraq's infrastructure. The government, Naqeeb said, "has exhausted all possible means" to solve the problem peacefully.
In some of the latest violence, a car bomb exploded Sunday near the home of Iraq's finance minister, Adil Abdel-Mahdi, killing one of his guards. The minister himself escaped injury, officials said.
One U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded in two attacks on military convoys in and around Baghdad, the military reported. No other details were immediately provided.
In Haditha, some 30 insurgents mounted a coordinated assault on the city's police headquarters that started at 9 p.m. Saturday and lasted three hours.
"First of all, we were attacked by mortars," said Lt. Muneef Abdullah. "Then the armed men came and started shooting and throwing hand grenades. When we tried to defend ourselves, they started launching RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] at us."
He added, "We called the Americans to come and help us, but unfortunately they took three hours, as if they were coming to a wedding."
Other accounts of the attacks on the police stations in western Anbar province, which includes Fallujah, said that some of the Iraqi police were killed execution-style after being captured. The AP said at least seven policemen were lined up and shot after a gun battle in Haditha about 135 miles northwest of Baghdad.
According to Reuters news agency, the attackers in Haditha took 21 captured Iraqi policemen to an oil-pumping station and shot them to death in cold blood.
Last month, insurgents massacred 49 unarmed Iraqi army recruits after capturing them on a road northeast of Baghdad. A group led by Jordanian insurgent Abu Musab Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the killings.
The group also claimed in a message posted on the Internet that it was behind attacks Saturday in Samarra in which more than 30 people, most of them Iraqi policemen, were killed. Attackers stormed an Iraqi police station and set off at least two suicide car bombs in those attacks.
Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf, Iraq, and staff writer William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
