1.

U.S. ATTACK IN IRAQ KILLS 100 INSURGENTS
By Bassem Mroue

** U.S. Soldiers Launch Major Offensive against Insurgents in Iraq; As Many As 100 Militants Killed **

Associated Press
May 10, 2005

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=741609

BAGHDAD -- American troops backed by helicopters and war planes launched a major offensive against followers of Iraq's most wanted insurgent, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a desert area near the Syrian border, and as many as 100 militants were killed, U.S. officials said Monday.

Marines, sailors and soldiers from Regimental Combat Team 2, 2nd Marine Division, were conducting the offensive in an area north of the Euphrates River, in the al-Jazirah Desert, a known smuggling route and sanctuary for foreign insurgents, the U.S. military said.

The brief statement did not specify when the operation began, how many troops were involved, or whether there had been any American casualties. But U.S. military spokesmen later said the offensive started on Saturday and that it had killed as many as 100 militants. The military also reported that two U.S. Marines were killed in the area on Sunday and one on Monday.

A senior U.S. military official said the operation is targeting a group of al-Zarqawi followers believed to be operating in the area. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, is leader of the terrorist group al-Qaida in Iraq. He has declared allegiance to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and is tied to many bombings and kidnappings since the U.S.-led invasion removed Saddam Hussein from power two years ago.

Meanwhile, militants claimed in a Web posting they took a Japanese man hostage after ambushing a group of foreigners and Iraqi troops in western Iraq.

The Ansar al-Sunnah Army identified the Japanese hostage as Akihito Saito, 44, and posted a photocopy of his passport, including his picture, on the group's Web site.

The group said Saito was seized after Ansar al-Sunnah fighters ambushed a convoy of five foreign contractors, protected by 12 members of the Iraqi security forces. It claimed all were killed in the fight except for Saito, who was "severely injured."

One of the posted ID cards belonging to Saito identified him as a security manager of Hart GMSSCO, a British-based security firm. Hart CEO Simon Falkner said in London that there was an ambush with casualties Sunday night involving Hart personnel, but would not confirm whether Saito was an employee and if he had been seized.

The group claimed it ambushed the convoy near Hit, west of Baghdad, and said a fierce battle erupted between the fighters and those in the convoy. Hit is about 80 miles from where U.S. forces have launched a major offensive against militants near the Syrian border. It was not known if the offensive had any connection to the ambush.

Six bodies also were found Monday in Markab al-Tair village, near the Syrian frontier, police Col. Wathiq Mohammed said. He identified them as a senior Iraqi border policeman and five of his relatives.

The offensive is one of the largest involving U.S. troops since American and Iraqi forces took over the insurgent bastion of Fallujah in November. Two weeks ago, about 1,000 U.S. soldiers completed a four-day operation against insurgents north of Baghdad where a civilian helicopter was shot down.

The military has stepped up raids on suspected hideouts across the country, including near the Syrian border, where U.S. and Iraqi officials say foreign militants are entering the country to attack coalition forces.

The Chicago Tribune reported that more than 1,000 U.S. troops supported by fighter jets and helicopter gunships raided villages Sunday in and around Obeidi, about 185 miles west of Baghdad, in an operation expected to last several days. [See #2 below.]

The report, by a journalist embedded with the U.S. forces, said the offensive "was seeking to uproot a persistent insurgency in an area that American intelligence indicated has become a haven for foreign fighters flowing in from Syria."

Some U.S. forces were able to conduct limited raids north of the Euphrates and predator drones provided surveillance Sunday, but most troops were stuck south of the waterway as engineers tried to build a pontoon bridge there, the Tribune said.

It also quoted some Marines as saying residents of one riverside town turned off all their lights at night, apparently to warn neighboring towns of the approaching U.S. troops.

"Our analysis is that there's a foreign fighter flow from Syria," Col. Stephen Davis, commander of Marine Regimental Combat Team 2, told the Tribune. " The trademark of these folks is to be where we're not. We haven't got north of the river for a while."

On Sunday, the U.S. military said coalition forces killed six insurgents and detained 54 suspects in raids targeting al-Qaida in Iraq, in Qaim, a Syrian border town about 200 miles west of Baghdad. Coalition forces said they acted on information received from Mohammed Amin Husayn al-Rawi, an al-Zarqawi associate captured April 26.

The crackdown came amid insurgent violence that has killed more than 310 people since April 28, when a new Iraqi government was announced with seven positions left undecided. At least nine American servicemen were killed over the weekend.

Iraq's interim National Assembly on Sunday approved six more Cabinet members, including four more Sunni Arabs. But the Sunni man selected as human rights minister turned down the job because he didn't want to be chosen on a sectarian basis, tarnishing the Shiite premier's bid to include the disaffected minority believed to be driving the insurgency.

The five new members were sworn in Monday. The rest of Cabinet also repeated the oath of office after new language was added at the request of Barham Salih, the Kurdish planning and development cooperation minister. The ministers pledged their allegiance to a "federal, democratic" Iraq, which Salih said brought the wording of the oath in line with language in Iraq's transitional law.

Iraq's two main Kurdish factions, which hold 75 seats in the 270-member National Assembly, are pressing for a federal government that would give strong autonomy to the Kurdish north.

When complete, the new government is expected to include 17 Shiite ministers, eight Kurds, six Sunnis and a Christian. Three deputy premiers have been named one each for the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, with the fourth held open for a woman.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari pledged Sunday to take "all necessary measures" to restore security in Iraq and said the government could impose martial law to fight the insurgents.

Violence continued Monday with three Iraqis killed in a suicide car bombing at police checkpoint at a busy Baghdad intersection, said police Maj. Mousa Abdul Karim. The dead included two policemen and a civilian. Six other policemen and three civilians were wounded, he said.

At least three other car bombs exploded in Baghdad later Monday, including one that wounded an unidentified number of Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint, said U.S. military spokesman Master Sgt. Greg Kaufman.

The U.S. military said it had conducted several raids Sunday in and around Baghdad, detaining 13 suspected insurgents, some armed with rocket-propelled grenades.

Two of the suspects were captured in a raid aimed at the leader of a terror cell believed to have plotted an April 20 assassination attempt against former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the military said. Allawi was unhurt, but at least one policeman was killed and two wounded by a suicide car bomb.

On Sunday, the Iraqi government said its security forces had captured another al-Zarqawi associate. He was identified as Ammar Adnan Mohammed Hamza al-Zubaydi, also known as Abul Abbas. Al-Zubaydi is accused of planning an April 2 assault by dozens of insurgents who blew up car bombs and fired RPGs outside Abu Ghraib prison, the Iraqi statement said.

At least 1,603 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

2.

World

MARINES SURPRISED BY INSURGENTS' PREPARATION FOR ATTACK
By James Janega

Chicago Tribune
May 10, 2005

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505100158may10,1,3821731.story?coll=chi-news-hed (registration required)
or
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/world/11605487.htm

AL QAIM, Iraq -- The Marines who swept into the Euphrates River town of Ubaydi confronted an enemy they had not expected to find -- and one that attacked in surprising ways.

As they pushed from house to house in early fighting, trying to flush out the insurgents who had attacked their column with mortar fire, the Marines ran into sandbagged emplacements behind garden walls. Commanders said Marines also found a house where insurgents were crouching in the basement, firing rifles and machine guns upward through holes at ankle height in the ground-floor walls, aiming at spots that the Marines' body armor did not cover.

The shock was that the enemy was not supposed to be in Ubaydi at all. Instead, American intelligence indicated that the insurgency had massed on the other side of the river. Marine commanders expressed surprise Monday not only at the insurgents' presence but also the extent of their preparations, as if they expected the Marines to come.

"That is the great question," said Col. Stephen Davis, commander of Marine Regimental Combat Team 2, responsible for this rugged corner of Anbar province near the Syrian border. American officials describe the region, known as the Jazirah Desert, as a haven for foreign fighters who shuttle across the porous Syrian border, using the broken terrain for cover.

Three Marine companies and supporting armored vehicles crossed to the north side of the Euphrates River early Monday, using rafts and a newly constructed pontoon bridge. From there they were expected to roll west toward the border, raiding isolated villages where insurgents are believed to cache weapons and fighters. The offensive, planned for weeks, is expected to stretch on for several days.

"We're north of the river (and) we're moving everywhere we want to go," Davis said late Monday. "Resistance is predictably low, but I do not expect it to stay that way."

In recent weeks, intelligence suggested that insurgents were using the area to build car bombs that later would be used in attacks in Baghdad and other cities. More than 300 Iraqis have been killed in insurgent attacks in the past two weeks, following the formation of a Shiite-dominated government.

A senior military official in Washington told the Associated Press that the Marines were targeting followers of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been linked to many of the most violent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces.

The offensive that began Sunday is described as one of the largest involving U.S. troops since the assault on Fallujah last fall. It involves more than 1,000 Marines and Army personnel, backed by helicopters and jet fighters.

With the Marines pressing the assault, new details emerged about the pitched battles that took place Sunday in Ubaydi, a town perched on the tip of a bend in the Euphrates, about 12 miles east of the Syrian border. As Army engineers worked to build the pontoon bridge, waiting Marines came under mortar fire from a town they had assumed was free of the enemy.

After calling in air strikes from prowling fighter jets and helicopter gunships, the Marines entered the town in armored personnel carriers and light armored vehicles. At times the fighting was door to door as Marines sifted through areas where resistance was stiffest.

According to commanders, Marines entered walled-off front yards in a row of white townhouses in the town's southwest corner to find a scene reminiscent of the fighting in Fallujah: sandbagged firing positions next to the front doors. They suspected the area had been used for mortar attacks.

Maj. Steve Lawson of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines said his troops had found a house on the north side of town where insurgents apparently lay in ambush. Holes low in the walls allowed insurgents hiding in the basement to fire up at the Marines as they entered.

After retreating, Marines in Lawson's company called in artillery and heavy machine guns to rake the house. As sporadic fighting continued Monday morning, they brought in tanks and leveled it, Davis said.

Though military commanders in Baghdad announced that 100 insurgent fighters were killed in the early fighting, along with three Marines, Davis' figures were lower. He said "a couple of dozen" insurgents had been killed in Ubaydi, about 10 at another river crossing near Al Qaim, and several who were killed by air strikes north of the river.

Other commanders said they had recovered few bodies but had seen blood trails that suggested insurgents were dragging away wounded or dead fighters.

The number of insurgents in the region is "in the hundreds," Davis said. "How many hundreds is tough to tell."

But more surprising, he said, was the insurgents' preparation and tactical prowess, a development that he said reinforced intelligence that many of the insurgents have been trained by outsiders.

Davis described sophisticated attacks in which the detonation of a roadside bomb would be quickly followed by accurate mortar or rocket fire, then machine-gun fire as Marines raced to the area.

"They clearly have trained people," he said. "It looks rehearsed."

Marines who had captured an existing bridge over the Euphrates north of Al Qaim came under attack early Monday by several insurgents, Davis said. An air assault killed about 10 of them, who were wearing flak jackets -- which American officials generally take as a sign that the fighters were not local Iraqis.

As the fighting raged Sunday in Ubaydi and other towns along the Euphrates, a platoon of Marines watched from cliffs near the Syrian border, hoping to call in air strikes on any fighters who tried to slip across, commanders said.

The commanders reported that the Marines saw truckloads of men speeding toward remote houses in the region, leaping off the trucks and racing inside.

They came out carrying armloads of rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles, loaded them onto their trucks and headed back east, toward the fighting.

jjanega@tribune.com

3.

U.S. MARINES LEAD IRAQ OFFENSIVE ** About 1,000 troops battle insurgents near Syrian border **

CNN
May 10, 2005 -- 12:35 p.m. EDT

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/05/10/iraq.main/

BAGHDAD -- U.S. Marines pushed north Tuesday as they battled insurgents near the Syrian border, part of about 1,000 troops trying to root out insurgents and foreign fighters, the U.S. military said.

"Marines crossed over from the southern banks [of the Euphrates River] to the north and are now operating in the northern Jazira Desert and in pursuit of the enemy," the military said Tuesday.

Insurgents, including at least two suicide car bombers, attacked U.S. forces in Qaim about 10 miles (16 kilometers) east of the Syrian border, the military said in a news release. Ten insurgents were captured and no Marines were killed, the statement said.

Operation Matador began during the weekend to crack down on violence in restive Anbar province, a huge swath of land extending from Iraq's western borders to towns near Baghdad.

On Tuesday, Raja Nawaf, the governor of Anbar province, was kidnapped, Anbar tribal sources said.

There were no immediate details about abduction.

Troops from the U.S. Army, Navy and Marines are trying to break down the network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the military said Monday.

Al-Zarqawi, the most wanted insurgent in Iraq, is thought to be responsible for many of the bombings in Iraq and has declared himself an ally of Osama bin Laden.

On Monday, the military said it had killed at least 100 insurgents and foreign fighters.

Three Marines from the 2nd Marine Division have died in the fighting, two on Sunday and one Monday, the military said.

James Janega, a Chicago Tribune reporter embedded with the Marines, said troops had battled about 300 insurgents in and around the town of Ubaydi.

Janega said U.S. forces suspect residents of nearby towns signaled the approach of an armored column by flicking their house lights on and off.

The Marines had not intended to make Ubaydi part of the operation but fought there most of Sunday and into Monday, he said.

Three other U.S. Marines died Monday in combat in eastern Anbar province, the U.S. military said.

Two of the Marines were killed by an indirect attack during combat in Qarma, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad.

A homemade bomb killed the other Marine in Nasser Wa Salaam, just west of Baghdad, near Abu Ghraib prison.

Since the start of the war, 1,606 U.S. forces have died in Iraq.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

A suicide car bomber in Baghdad killed at least seven people and wounded 14 others, police said; it was one of three bombings in the capital.

In April, insurgents launched 135 car bombings in Iraq, with half of them being suicide attacks, the U.S. military said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have detained 59 suspected terrorists over the past 72 hours in the northern cities Mosul and Tal Afar, the U.S. military said. Troops also discovered what the military said was a car-bomb factory.

The deadline set by Iraqi militants holding Australian hostage Douglas Wood has passed, with no news on his fate.

Japan is scrambling to confirm reports of a national being taken hostage in Iraq during the weekend.

--CNN's Kevin Flower and Barbara Starr contributed to this report.

4.

World

Middle East

Iraq

MARINES KILL 100 FIGHTERS IN SANCTUARY NEAR SYRIA
By Jonathan Finer

Washington Post
May 10, 2005
Page A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/09/AR2005050900203.html

BAGHDAD -- More than 1,000 Marines backed by Cobra helicopter gunships and F-18 jets attacked targets Monday in a region of northwestern Iraq that commanders called a sanctuary for foreign fighters.

As many as 100 insurgents were killed and 10 captured in the assault near the Syrian border, which began late Sunday night, according to Capt. Jeffrey Pool, a spokesman with Marine Regimental Combat Team 2, which is leading the assault.

One Marine was killed in fighting that included some house-to-house combat, Pool said.

"Operations are being described here as running smoothly. The targets were predetermined mostly by intelligence from local citizens and from other sources," he said in an e-mail message. "Some buildings that insurgents were fighting from were leveled, and we have not sifted through to get the full [casualty] count."

The assault was centered on the town of Ubaydi in an area along the long, porous Syrian border where foreign guerrillas have frequently crossed into Iraq to join the insurgency. Three weeks ago, insurgents mounted large-scale, sustained attacks on a Marine base on the border and briefly seized control of the border town of Qaim.

Pool said Marines believe that foreign fighters often stopped in the desolate region after crossing from Syria. "There they would arm and get their missions to conduct in the more populated areas of Ramadi, Fallujah, Mosul and Baghdad," he said.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, a prominent Sunni Muslim political organization said its headquarters and the home of one of its leaders were raided and that 22 people were arrested, including two of the group's members.

At a news conference in an office littered with shattered glass and ransacked furniture, members of the National Dialogue Council, which has been negotiating with Iraq's new Shiite Muslim-led government over the makeup of the cabinet, denounced the raid and said it was intended to disrupt the group's efforts to foster unity among the country's main factions.

"Our reaction will be continuing our work to make all the Iraqis unite," said a member of the council, Salih Mutlak. "We will complain to the government to stop this kind of reckless behavior that will lead to more security tension and separation among the Iraqis."

Details of the raid were still vague late Monday. Dialogue Council members said that U.S. forces had joined in the raid, but Robert Callahan, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, denied any such involvement.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari learned about the incident after it took place, according to spokesman Laith Kubba, who said it was unclear whether Iraqi soldiers, police or both were involved.

Kubba said the raid might have been provoked by a tip from a group seeking to disrupt political negotiations by alleging ties between the Dialogue Council and insurgents.

Leaflets strewn around the council's office bore photos of a burning building that appeared to be the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad, which was bombed in August 2003. "If you helped Zarqawi or his group, your house will be the next," one slogan read, referring to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian insurgent leader.

The raid was the latest bout of turbulence to buffet a government that, since the legislative elections more than three months ago, has been mired in squabbling among religious and ethnic groups that delayed the formation of a cabinet.

All but one of 37 cabinet positions -- human rights minister -- have been filled.

Underscoring the sensitivity of the process, cabinet members were sworn in Monday, many for the second time because their initial oath had omitted words declaring their commitment to protect Iraq's "federal, democratic" system, a phrase Kurdish representatives believe preserves some of their autonomy in the country's north.

Meanwhile, across Iraq, the violence that had escalated during the period of uncertainty over the new cabinet in recent weeks continued Monday.

Insurgents took a Japanese man hostage after attacking an Iraqi military convoy near the western city of Hit, according to a statement posted on the Internet and quoted by news services. The Japanese government confirmed the kidnapping of Akihiko Saito, who according to the Associated Press was working at a U.S. military base.

A militant group, the Ansar al-Sunna Army, said that 12 Iraqi security workers and four foreign contract workers were killed in an ambush, and that Saito, who was identified as an employee of the Cyprus-based security firm Hart GMSSCO -- the former name of Hart Security Ltd. -- was badly injured, the AP reported.

The details of the attack could not be confirmed Monday night.

Meanwhile, an Australian Muslim cleric left for Baghdad hoping to win the release of Douglas Wood, 63, an Australian who lives in California. A militant group holding Wood demanded in a video released Friday that Australia withdraw its troops from Iraq.

Elsewhere, a car bomb shook the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Ilam at about 9 a.m., engulfing several vehicles in flames. Two Iraqi policemen and a civilian were killed, the AP reported.

And in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, Gen. Huraish Nimrawi, a security official in charge of protecting the oil refinery there, was shot and killed, according to military and hospital sources.

--Correspondent Caryle Murphy and special correspondents Bassam Sebti and Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad and Salih Saif Aldin in Tikrit contributed to this report.

5.

HUNDREDS OF U.S. TROOPS FIGHT INSURGENTS NEAR IRAQ'S BORDER WITH SYRIA
By Thomas Wagner

Associated Press
May 10, 2005 -- 2:08 p.m. EDT

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/050510/w051056.html

BAGHDAD -- U.S. forces backed by helicopter gunships and warplanes swept through an area of western Iraq near the Syrian border for a third day Tuesday, raiding desert outposts and safe houses belonging to insurgents, the U.S. military said.

As many as 100 militants have been killed since Operation Matador, one of the largest American military offensives in Iraq in six months, began Saturday night in the border town of Qaim, 320 kilometres west of Baghdad, the military said.

At least three U.S. marines have been killed in the offensive, which is hunting for followers of Iraq's most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the group "al-Qaida in Iraq," said U.S. officials.

The offensive comes amid a surge of militant attacks across Iraq, often targeting Iraqi security forces and civilians, since the country's new government was announced April 28.

Two car bombs exploded in central Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least seven people and wounding 19, police said. Three American soldiers were among the injured.

The U.S. military said three U.S. marines were killed in central Iraq on Monday, one by a homemade bomb in Nasser Wa Salaam, 40 km west of Baghdad, and two others by indirect fire in Karmah, 80 km west of the capital.

On Tuesday, Japan's defence chief, Yoshinori Ono, said the apparent kidnapping of one of its citizens would not affect the country's deployment of 550 troops on a humanitarian mission in southern Iraq. The victim's family supported that position.

U.S. marine Capt. Jeffrey Pool said soldiers built a pontoon bridge across the Euphrates River on Monday and marines had pushed into the northern Jazirah Desert, a largely unpatrolled area near the Syrian border that the military believes is heavy with foreign insurgents.

Residents in the area of the offensive reported fighting Tuesday in Obeidi, 300 km west of Baghdad, and the two nearby towns of Rommana and Karabilah. Speaking by telephone, they said frightened residents were fleeing the Qaim area.

"It's truly horrific, there are snipers everywhere, rockets, no food, no electricity," Abu Omar al-Ani, a father of three, said from Qaim on Monday night. "Today five rockets fell in front of my house."

Pool said Tuesday that insurgents had tried the night before to launch a counterattack seven km from U.S. Camp Gannon in Qaim. They attacked a marine convoy with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and two suicide car bombers.

One bomb damaged an armoured Humvee, and a suicide car bomber was destroyed by a U.S. marine tank, but no marines were killed and 10 insurgents surrendered, Pool said.

Marine commanders expressed surprise at the extent of resistance in Obeidi and surrounding villages on the southern side of the Euphrates River, telling the Chicago Tribune their intelligence had indicated the insurgency had massed on the other side of the waterway.

A Los Angeles Times reporter said insurgents had sandbag bunkers piled in front of some homes and fighters strategically positioned on rooftops and balconies.

In the towns of Sabah, Obeidi and Karabilah, the reporter said, insurgents fired mortar rounds at U.S. marine convoys along the Euphrates' southern edge.

Marines who pursued attackers in those towns took part in house-to-house combat against dozens of well-armed insurgents, the L.A. Times reported.

At one point, the paper said, a marine walked into a house and an insurgent hiding in the basement fired through a floor grate, killing him. Another marine who was retrieving a wounded comrade inside a house suffered shrapnel wounds when an insurgent threw a grenade through a window.

The Times report said insurgents were using boats to transport weapons from one side of the Euphrates River to another, and that some militants wore body armour. It said one marine suffered a broken back and at least two were wounded Sunday when a land mine hit their tank.

The Sunni militant Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed on its website Monday that it had kidnapped Akihiko Saito, 44, after ambushing a group of five foreign contractors protected by Iraqi forces. It said Saito was "seriously injured" in the fighting and that the others had died.

A spokesman for Saito's employer, Cyprus-based security firm Hart GMSSCO, confirmed he was missing after an ambush Sunday night involving Hart personnel.

Tuesday's worst car bomb attack in Baghdad occurred near a cinema in al-Nasr Square, a main intersection of shops, office buildings and apartments. The Interior Ministry said at least seven people were killed and 16 wounded by a suicide car bomb that exploded as a U.S. military convoy was passing.

A U.S. military spokeswoman, Capt. Kelly Lewis, confirmed the car bomb attack, but said it apparently targeted an Iraqi army patrol, wounding at least 10 Iraqis, including security forces and civilians. Three American soldiers were also wounded, Lewis said, but she could not confirm whether they were part of a convoy.

6.

U.S. MARINES HUNT FOR INSURGENTS IN IRAQI PROVINCE NEAR SYRIA
By Todd Zeranski

Bloomberg News
May 10, 2005

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aqdXy6cPi7.A&refer=us

U.S. Marines pursued insurgents in combat operations in Iraq's Anbar province for a third day, sweeping the northwestern reaches of the region near the Syrian border, identified by commanders as a smuggling and transit route for foreign fighters.

U.S. Army soldiers constructed a pontoon bridge across the Euphrates River late yesterday to allow Marines access to an area where intelligence analysts believed fighters were located, U.S. Marine Captain Jeffrey Pool, a military spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement today. After crossing the river, Marines are now hunting for rebels across the northern Jazirah Desert.

As many as 100 people have been killed, including foreigners, in the operation so far, Pool said. At least three Marines have been killed. Gunmen today kidnapped Anbar's governor, Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi, as he drove to the provincial capital Ramadi, and told his family he would be released when U.S. forces withdraw from al-Qaim, the Associated Press reported. Al-Qaim is about 10 miles from the border with Syria.

The western Iraq operation is the largest since U.S. Marines assaulted Fallujah in November to drive insurgents from their stronghold city west of Baghdad.

In Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, a car bomb went off near Liberation Square, killing Iraqi security forces, U.S. Army Captain Patricia Brewer said in a telephone interview. Seven people were killed and 16 were wounded, an unidentified Iraqi Interior Ministry official told AP. A second blast an hour later and a few miles away injured three policemen, the news agency said.

STAGING AREA

One U.S. Marine was killed yesterday during operations in al-Qaim by "enemy small-arms fire," the Pentagon said on its Web site. Two Marines were killed on May 8, one in Qaim and one in Ubaydi in Anbar province, the department said. All three were attached to Regimental Combat Team 2 of the 2nd Marine Division.

The desert province is used by foreign fighters to plan attacks on larger cities, including Baghdad, Mosul in the north, and Ramadi, the U.S. military said in an e-mailed statement from Baghdad.

More than 1,000 Marines, sailors and soldiers took part in the river crossing, the Los Angeles Times reported, and are preparing for assaults on scattered villages in the area.

U.S. helicopter gunships and at least one F/A-18 Hornet warplane were used in the battle to fire on vehicles and boats.

The combat strike is the latest attempt by the U.S. to bring control to Anbar, Iraq's largest province, which touches the desert borders of Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, allowing fighters to enter Iraq across a remote frontier spanning hundreds of miles.

SUNNI ROLE

About the size of the U.S. state of Kansas, Anbar is the central part of the so-called "Sunni Triangle," the locus of the Sunni Muslim-led insurgency.

Yesterday, Saadun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni, was named Iraq's defense minister. Iraqi officials want the appointment of a Sunni to the post to help stem the insurgency. Supporters of usurped former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, are blamed for much of the violence in the country.

Last night the insurgents attacked a Marine convoy with small-arms fire, roadside bombs and two suicide bombers, Pool said in the statement. One of the car bombs damaging one U.S. Humvee, while the other was destroyed by a M1A1 Abrams tank. There were no Marines killed in the engagement, while the two car bombers were killed. Ten suspects surrendered and were taken into custody.

Earlier this week, Iraqi security forces found a car-bomb factory while carrying out search operations between Mosul and Tal Afar, the Iraqi government said in a statement. Two car bombs were discovered in the search, as well as large quantities of car bomb materials. Thirty-four suspected terrorists were captured in the raid, and a third car bomb that was ready for use was disabled, the statement said.

Mosul is located about 250 miles (402 kilometers) north of Baghdad, and Tal Afar is about 50 miles west of Mosul, close to the Syrian border.

--To contact the reporter on this story: Todd Zeranski in New York at tzeranski@bloomberg.net