www.albasrah.net

Iraqi Resistance Report for Monday, 5 January 2004 through Wednesday, 

7 January 2004.  Translated and/or
compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board
of the Free Arab Voice.
 
Monday, 5 January 2004.
 
On Monday the US military occupation spokesmen
admitted belatedly to attacks and casualties suffered
by the aggressor army on Sunday, 4 January 2004.
 
In the first of two attacks in which American
occupation troops were wounded, armed Iraqi Resistance
fighters attacked an American occupation foot patrol
in the city of Tikrit.  US spokesmen claimed one
American was wounded in that attack.
 
In a second attack, an Iraqi Resistance roadside bomb
exploded as an American military patrol was passing
through the city of Bayji, west of Baghdad.  Three
American occupation troops were wounded.
 
Britain for its part, made its own belated news
announcement, disclosing only on Monday 5 January that
two British occupation troops – a major and a sergeant
– had been killed in what was described as a "traffic
accident" in Baghdad on Thursday, 1 January 2004.
 
In a separate incident, an explosive device detonated
in a main street outside the city of Kirkuk, killing
one Iraqi and wounding three others.  The Iraqi puppet
police said that the bomb was probably targeted at an
American military patrol but went off just before they
passed.
 
Meanwhile the puppet police in Kirkuk announced that
they had foiled an attempt to fire two rockets at the
headquarters of the US occupation forces in the city
on Monday.  The puppet police reported finding two
Katyusha rockets and their launcher which had been
aimed at the Kirkuk Airport, 5km west of Kirkuk, where
the American invaders have set up their local
headquarters.  The puppet police made the find on
Monday morning, according to puppet police chief for
the city Lieutenant General Shirku Shaker Hakim who
spoke to Agence France Presse.  Hakim indicated that
the puppet police immediately ran to tell the
Americans of their find, and the US invader troops
showed up on the scene and disarmed the device.
 
Hakim also confirmed that a puppet police station in
Kirkuk was hit by a Katyusha rocket, wounding one
puppet policeman. Hakim said "the attack occurred at
noon on the al-'Urubah police station in the east of
the city."
 
Hakim added that on Sunday night another Iraqi
Resistance attack had struck the headquarters of the
collaborationist chauvinist Kurdish party the
so-called Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) which is
led by Jalal at-Talibani in the center of Kirkuk. 
That Resistance attack with a Katyusha wounded one of
the Peshmergah collaborationist guards who was taken
to the hospital.  In addition the attack did heavy
damage to the chauvinist party building and its
façade.  Hakim said that the Sunday attack "was the
first of its kind against the headquarters of the
Kurdish parties in the city."
 
Various parts of the Iraqi capital Baghdad was shaken
by a series of several explosions on Monday but the US
military occupation later attempted to explain those
away by saying that they had been "controlled
explosions" carried out by the occupation forces
themselves.
 
An Iraqi Resistance fighter in the city of Kirkuk on
Monday approached puppet policeman Muhammad Yusuf
Ahmad as he sat in his police car.  The Resistance
fighter suddenly grabbed Ahmad's AK-47 Kalashnikov
assault rifle and shot the policeman in the chest with
it, killing him instantly.  The Resistance fighter
tried to get away from the scene but other puppet
policemen pursued him and killed him, according to the
head of the police station where the attack took
place, Major General Nabil Ahmad Yusuf, who was
speaking to the AFP.
 
In Kirkuk on Monday US occupation forces carried out
extensive raids on the headquarters of various legal
parties in the aftermath of ethnic conflict sparked by
Kurdish chauvinist demands to annex the oil rich city
for the Kurdish part of the country.
 
A high official in the Iraqi puppet police said that
the American raids were not limited to the
headquarters of the Kurdish chauvinist parties, the
PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, but were
affecting all the Arab, Turkoman, and Assyrian
Chaldaean  party headquarters as well.
 
Major General Turhan Yusuf, General Commander of the
puppet police in the city of Kirkuk said that the
American forces are carrying out the widest possible
raids with the aim of confiscating weapons.  He said
that the headquarters of all the political parties
were being raided over the course of 72 hours.  Yusuf
said that "large quantities of weapons" had been
confiscated, including "anti-tank weapons and
unlicensed machine guns."  The puppet police commander
denied American claims that any members of the
political parties had been arrested in the raids.
 
For his part, Najaht Hasan Karim, an official in the
Kurdistan Democratic Party in Kirkuk, said that the
"American forces indeed did raid the branch
headquarters but they didn't arrest any of our members
because we are part of the international coalition
that took part in Operation Iraqi Freedom" using the
official White House terminology for the illegal
American invasion of Iraq in which the Kurdish
chauvinist parties did indeed take part.
 
 
 Sources: al-Arab al-Yawm daily newspaper, Amman,
Jordan, Tuesday, 6 January 2004.
http://www.aljazeera.net/news/arabic/2004/1/1-6-1.htm
 
Tuesday, 6 January 2004.
 
Iraqi Resistance fighters late on Monday night
attacked a group of contractors working with an
American imperialist monopoly in occupied Iraq.  The
French Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday that two
French citizens serving the occupation were killed and
a third wounded in the Resistance attack, which took
place in al-Fallujah, west of Baghdad after their car
had stalled.
 
Iraqi puppet police in Karbala' have announced that
they found the body of a dead Polish soldier from the
Polish contingent serving the American occupation of
Iraq.  They found the body in the district of
al-Hindiyah, in Karbala' Province, south of Baghdad. 
The puppet police announcement did not provide details
as to the cause of the invader soldier's death.
 
Two powerful explosions shook building foundations in
Baghdad on Tuesday. An American occupation spokesman
said that he was aware of the explosions and claimed
that they were the result of the US invader forces
blowing up ammunition in order to get rid of it.
 
An explosive device blew up outside the city of Kirkuk
killing one Iraqi and wounding three others.  The
Iraqi puppet police said that the bomb was apparently
targeted at an American military patrol but exploded
before they passed by.
 
Iraqi Resistance fighters killed a member of the Iraqi
puppet police force in Baaqubah Tuesday morning.  A
spokesman for the puppet police said that the puppet
policeman was killed as he was on his way to work at
the provincial puppet police headquarters.
 
In al-Basrah at least four Iraqi citizens were wounded
when Iraqi puppet police opened fire on demobilized
members of the Army of the Republic of Iraq who were
demonstrating to demand the back pay which had been
promised to them.
 
Angry crowds gathered in Baaqubah on Tuesday to pay
their last respects to two men who were described as
Iraqi civilians killed by the American troops as they
were heading home on Monday.  Relatives of the two men
said that they were on their way home from a coffee
house in a village near Baaqubah on Monday when an
American occupation tank opened fire on them.  The
crowds gathered for the funerals chanting slogans
like: "America is the enemy of God!"
 
A resident of the town said that the two men had
wanted to cross the street on their way home, but
finding their way blocked by American tanks, they
walked along the riverbank instead, only when they
tried to enter their houses they were shot and killed.
 
US aggressor forces, meanwhile, arrested 50 Iraqi
citizens in the last 24 hours in massive raids and
searches that they have been conducting north and west
of Baghdad.
 
A statement issued by the American occupation forces
indicated that US 3rd Cavalry forces carried out the
assaults in areas where they suspected what they
called "foreign fighters" to be based along the Syrian
border.  In one instance four persons were arrested,
one of whom had been a target of an American
occupation manhunt.
 
Twenty-one other Iraqi citizens were arrested in
al-Anbar Province west of Baghdad in the area of
ar-Ramadi and al-Fallujah.  In addition the US
occupation 4th Division arrested 22 Iraqi citizens in
the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.
 
Meanwhile Nuri Badran, puppet so-called "minister of
the interior" in the American-appointed "government"
announced that the occupation regime was holding Saudi
citizens some of whom, he said, had "proven" links to
attacks on occupation forces in Iraq.  The quisling
Badran said that the number of such prisoners was
"very small" and that they were being held inside
occupied Iraq.
 
Sources: al-Arab al-Yawm daily newspaper, Amman,
Jordan, Wednesday, 7 January 2004. 
http://www.aljazeera.net/news/arabic/2004/1/1-6-22.htm
 
Wednesday, 7 January 2004.
 
Iraqi Resistance forces launched a mortar barrage at
about 6:45 pm against the occupation military base
known as Logistical Base Seitz, wounding 35 American
aggressor troops.  According to a statement by the US
military occupation, six mortar shells exploded at the
base.  "The wounded soldiers were given first-aid and
have been evacuated from the site for further medical
treatment," the statement said, indicating also that
the soldiers were from the 3rd Corps Support Command. 
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel
James Cassella said some of the wounded soldiers
returned to duty shortly after the attack, while
others were hospitalized. He said he did not have
figures on how many troops were lightly injured and
how many were seriously wounded.
 
The Pentagon added that the soldiers were from the US
occupation army's 541st Maintenance Battalion based in
Fort Riley in the US state of Kansas which is part of
the 3rd Corps.  The US occupation spokesman said that
the mortar shells hit "a living area where they have
their sleeping quarters."
 
Iraqi Resistance forces attacked a check point on the
road between Bayji and al-Huwayjah north east of the
city of Kirkuk killing an Iraqi puppet policeman and
two civilians.
 
A mother and father of five children were killed when
an American tank opened fire on their house on the
outskirts of al-Fallujah.  Witnesses said that the
parents died as a result of the tank gunfire.
Associated Press Television News film showed a wall of
the house collapsed into a rubble of concrete bricks
and two walls splattered with blood that neighbors
said belonged to Ahmad Hasan Farud, 37, and his wife
Suham 'Umar, 28. They said the couple's five children
were in bed in an adjoining room and survived Tuesday
night's attack uninjured.  
 
"This is democracy? These corpses?" Ra'd Majid asked
at the hospital, gesturing at the remains of the
couple, on gurneys covered with bloody sheets. "It's a
crime against humanity."  He added: "They just brought
in their tank and fired at their house from 200 meters
(220 yards) away. What did these people do wrong?"
 
American occupation sources claim that two shots of
"indirect fire" rang out as US occupation forces were
doing house-to-house raids and that the destruction of
the Hasan's house was in response.
 
Tuesday's attack came as coalition officials said they
would become "increasingly aggressive with the
die-hards," while simultaneously making conciliatory
gestures to moderates or fence-sitters.
 
In Kirkuk the Iraqi Resistance hit an Iraqi puppet
police vehcile with a rocket-propelled grenade on
Tuesday night.  One puppet police officer was killed
and two others wounded in the attack, one of them
seriously, according to a report by the puppet police
force.
 
Also in Kirkuk the Iraqi Resistance fired a grenade at
the office of the so-called Kurdistan Socialist Party
office, wounding one person and inflicting what the
puppet police called "slight damage."
 
In al-Basrah, a British occupation soldier died in
what was called a "training accident" in the southern
part of the city, according to a British aggressor
spokesman.
 
Sources in the Iraqi puppet police reported that a
clash took place between the Iraqi Resistance and
American occupation forces in al-Fallujah, west of
Baghdad.  According to the American-appointed puppet
police, two Iraqis were killed in the battle.
 
One Iraqi puppet policeman was also reported killed by
Iraqi Resistance forces, according to the puppet
police, who said that an Iraqi civilian also died in
that incident.
 
The American occupation forces announced that they had
arrested 80 persons whom they suspect of taking part
in Resistance operations. The arrests came as the
occupation authorities made a gesture of announcing
that "hundreds" of the thousands of Iraqis now being
held by the invaders would be released in the next few
weeks.  US proconsul L. Paul Bremer spoke at a news
conference in which he said that the first batch of
100 prisoners would be released after they sign a
pledge renouncing what he called "violence," in the
personal presence of a judge or shaykh from their own
tribe.  The stipulation is similar to those that have
been imposed on prisoners by the Zionist entity in
occupied Palestine.
 
In a further sign of the sinking morale of US
occupation troops in Iraq, the United States
government has announced that it is offering a bonus
of $10,000 to each soldier who re-enlists when his
time in the military expires.  According to the
Associated Press, however, the American occupation
troops are not attracted by the monetary bribe and are
eager to get out of Iraq as soon as possible, knowing
that in the occupied country they are the targets for
the combined wrath of the entire country's militant
population.
 
"Man, they can't pay me enough to stay here," said a
23-year-old specialist from the US Army's 4th Infantry
Division as he manned a checkpoint with Iraqi puppet
police outside Baaqubah, 35 miles northeast of
Baghdad.  He was speaking with the AP which admitted
that his comments "reflect a sentiment not uncommon
among the nearly two dozen soldiers in Iraq who have
spoken with The Associated Press since the Army
announced the increased re-enlistment bonuses for
soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait on Monday.
Other soldiers at home were divided about the offer."
 
 
Sources: al-Arab al-Yawm daily newspaper, Amman,
Jordan, Thursday, 8 January 2004.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20040107/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_mortar_attack
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20040107/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_paid_to_stay_1
http://www.aljazeera.net/news/arabic/2004/1/1-7-29.htm
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040107/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_403