Stryker Brigade News

U.S. officials are struggling to secure cities across Iraq before general elections in January. But uprisings such as those in Tal Afar - quick, ferocious and well-coordinated - show a connected effort to disrupt them.

"I've been in Samara, my battalion has been in Najaf, we've broken through barricades in Baghdad," said Lt. Col. Karl Reed, who commanded one of the Tal Afar battles. "This was the most intense firefight I've ever been in (in) my career."

Military officials here said prisoners and supplies recovered from the fighting indicated that many of the rebels were Iraqi Sunni extremists loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian fugitive with al-Qaida links. Followers of al-Zarqawi have taken credit for several brazen attacks around the country, including the latest spate of kidnappings of foreigners and beheadings.

Fighters in Tal Afar "are being strongly supported by Zarqawi's army," said Capt. Stan Thurston, a Stryker Brigade intelligence officer. "They're very well funded and very well coordinated, both in Iraq and in foreign influences."

Located 60 miles from the Syrian border, Tal Afar is a dusty, mud-brick city that is home to 250,000 mostly Turkmen people. It is known as a smuggling depot for everything from contraband cigarettes to sheep.

Trouble began around Tal Afar in May, officials said. Roadside bomb attacks, once sporadic problems for U.S. convoys, jumped to six per week along Route Sante Fe, the renamed two-way paved highway that borders the city to the north and continues west to Syria, Thurston, the battle commander, said.

U.S. troops discovered cars full of grenade launchers and Russian-made machine guns, according to intelligence files. In one of the cars, six hand grenades were stuffed in the back pocket of the passenger seat, where a driver could readily grab them.

Around July, residents began reporting black-masked men toting AK-47 assault rifles walking through the city, Thurston said. Some took over homes at gunpoint, while others were welcomed as guests, he said. At Al Huda, the city's central mosque, lists were posted with the names of residents suspected of collaborating with Americans, he said. Many people started leaving town.

"They came in with weapons and controlled the city," said Nizur Thannan Yonnis, 29, a Tal Afar lawyer. "They killed people. No one liked that this happened to our city. But if someone said anything, they would kill you."

At about 10 a.m. on Sept. 4, a combined Stryker and Iraqi National Guard unit returning from arresting eight suspected terrorists in the southwestern part of the city came under heavy fire, Reed said. A Kiowa helicopter called in to provide cover was hit in the engine with an enemy rocket-propelled grenade and forced to make an emergency landing in a building courtyard, he said. Both pilots were injured.

Troops dispatched to rescue the pilots came under heavy fire, while grenades were dropped on them from buildings above, officials said.

U.S. troops managed to salvage the downed helicopter and return the troops to base about five miles from the city without further casualties. But the complexity and ferocity of the attack put them on high alert, officials said. Iraqi National Guard troops had one dead and three injured.

Five days later, as residents fled the city to avoid the fighting, U.S. commanders moved two battalions of 2,000 troops and 140 Strykers to Route Sante Fe and engaged insurgents, entrenched in 28 fighting positions along the road, in a 7-hour pitched battle, officials said.

U.S. officials said they believe they killed half of the 200 to 300 insurgents that had taken over the city.

"We've seen a change in the enemy since the end of June," said a U.S. intelligence official in northern Iraq. "They're not terribly sophisticated but quick and coordinated."

Early Sunday, U.S. commanders sent the same column of 2,000 troops into Tal Afar to root out remaining insurgents. But, besides a few sporadic bursts of gunfire, the troops reached the center of the city with no resistance.