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(via FOB Tacoma)
BAQUBAH, IRAQ — For more than a year, hundreds of masked gunmen loyal to Al Qaeda cruised this capital of their self-declared state, hauling Shiite Muslims from their homes and leaving bodies in the dusty, trash-strewn streets.
They set up a religious court and prisons, aid stations and food stores. And they imposed their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam on a population that was mostly too poor to flee and too terrified to resist.
U.S. and Iraqi soldiers last week pushed into this city that has been the heart of the Sunni Arab militants' fiefdom, in a campaign to bring three lawless neighborhoods under government control. What they found was a chilling indication of the ability of Sunni Arab insurgents to run a rival state, even as U.S. troops prepared to wipe them out.
U.S. and Iraqi troops say they have captured, injured or killed about 150 of the militants since the assault began last Tuesday. But they acknowledged Monday that they had found no top Al Qaeda in Iraq leaders, and speculated that 100 to 350 militants had fled ahead of the offensive, which involved 10,000 troops.
But U.S. Army Col. Stephen Townsend, who commands the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, based in Ft. Lewis, Wash., said the assault had denied the insurgents a major bastion and helped secure this city of about 300,000 residents.
"There ain't no capital of the Islamic State of Iraq anymore," Townsend told reporters Monday at a base on the city's northern outskirts.
[...]