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Minimal resistance in Tall Afar

Sep-13-2004 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

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MOSUL, Iraq — The Fort Lewis-based Stryker Brigade launched a major predawn assault yesterday to wrest the northern city of Tall Afar from insurgents but encountered almost no resistance.

About 2,000 soldiers — two battalions from the Army's 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and a battalion from the Iraqi National Guard — pushed into Tall Afar at 3:15 a.m. to confront what U.S. military officials had expected would be about 200 insurgents who had taken over the local government.

Instead, the U.S. forces, backed by F-16 fighter jets, encountered only brief fire from small arms, U.S. military officials said.

"We thought there would be more. The indications were that there would be more, but there wasn't," said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of U.S. forces involved in the operation. "There's some good news in there, and there's probably some bad news."

Ham said U.S. commanders concluded that some of the insurgents had probably fled in anticipation of the attack. Others, he said, probably gave up after being pounded by three U.S. airstrikes after the operation began Thursday. "And then, thirdly, there is some indication that perhaps we killed more than we think we did [in] the first couple of operations," Ham said. [...]

U.S. officials consider Tall Afar, a predominantly Shiite Muslim city of about 250,000 people between Mosul and the Syrian border, a strategic transit point for foreign insurgents entering Iraq to battle coalition forces.


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