Baqouba Push Leaves 17 Fighters Dead

Jun 23, 07:27 AM

Current Headlines: By LAUREN FRAYER

By Lauren Frayer

The Associated Press

BAQOUBA, Iraq

Hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi troops, under cover of F-16s, fought their way into three neighborhoods of besieged Baqouba on Friday to help clear Diyala province of entrenched insurgents. To the north of the city, U.S. helicopters killed 17 al-Qaida gunmen trying to sneak past a checkpoint.

As the mission of 10,000 U.S. soldiers to take back the volatile and extremely dangerous province intensified in its fourth day, so have concerns about keeping al-Qaida fighters on the run. The terrorist fighters and their allies already have been run out of Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar province, only to regroup in Diyala's capital of Baqouba and surrounding districts.

The U.S. ground forces commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, said more than three-quarters of Baqouba's al-Qaida leadership fled before the Americans moved into the city this week. At the time, drone observer planes spotted fighters planting dozens of roadside bombs on the main highway into Baqouba.

Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek, assistant commander for operations with the 25th Infantry Division, estimated that several hundred low- level al-Qaida fighters remained.

"It's 24-7 for us here, and it's probably the same for our adversary as well," he said Friday. "It's house to house, block to block, street to street, sewer to sewer - and it's also cars, vans - we're searching every one of them."

An Associated Press employee in Baqouba reported heavy fighting as U.S. troops swept into three eastern neighborhoods in Friday's operation, which began after U.S. forces warned residents to leave or stay indoors.

The U.S. military said the 17 al-Qaida fighters were killed trying to flee past Iraqi security blockades on the road to Khalis, a predominantly Shiite city northeast of Baqouba.

Earlier this week, creeping house to house through western Baqouba, U.S. soldiers made a startling discovery: a suspected al- Qaida field hospital stocked with oxygen tanks, heart defibrillators and other medical equipment.

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