Al-Arab Blog - مدونة العرب

Iraq Children's hospital conditions

Iraqi Resistance Report

for Thursday, 29 January 2004 through Saturday, 31 January 2004

Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial
board, the Free Arab Voice.


Thursday, 29 January 2004.

One person was killed and some 13 others wounded on Thursday in
two separate attacks on two patrols by the Iraqi puppet police
in vicinity of the cities of Kirkuk and Ba`qubah.

Puppet police Major General Anwar Ahmad Amin told the Agence France
Presse (AFP) that one puppet policeman was killed and another
injured Thursday morning when Iraqi Resistance fighters fired a
rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) at a puppet police checkpoint in
the village of al-Muradiayah, 83km south of Kirkuk

A roadside bomb exploded on Thursday in Ba`qubah, 65km north of
Baghdad, reportedly wounding 11 Iraqis, including at least eight
members of the puppet so-called civil defense forces set up and
run by the US occupation. The injuries of two persons were described
as serious. The explosion was apparently detonated by remote control
and was targeted at an Iraqi puppet police patrol that was passing
at the time. Captain Salar Husayn of the puppet so-called civil
defense forces said that eight members of the collaborationist
organization were wounded in the blast along with two persons who,
he said, were civilians. One of the injured, puppet civil defense
force member Yunus `Ali, said the bomb was placed in an abandoned
cart. "When we got closer to the cart, the explosion took place,"
he said.

In al-Basrah a spokesman for the British occupation forces who
control the city said that a bomb exploded by the side of a road
as a convoy of local puppet officials was passing by. Three people
whom the spokesman claimed were "passers by" were injured in the
blast.

After the explosion in the village south of Kirkuk, puppet police
Major General Shayrgo Shakir announced that the puppet so-called
civil defense forces had raided several villages in the area and
had arrested five people whom he described as "suspects."

Sources:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040129/
ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=540&ncid=716
http://www.islamonline.net/Arabic/news/2004-01/29/article06.shtml
http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp?type=
topNews&locale=ar_ME&storyID=4238222

-----

Friday, 30 January 2004.

Friday evening media sources in the Iraqi capital reported powerful
explosions shook various parts of the city. Initial reports brought
no details about the source of the blasts or the damage or casualties
they might have inflicted, according to television reports from al-
Jazeera satellite TV. A Reuters dispatch said that a roadside bomb
had gone off in the center of Baghdad and that US occupation forces
had cordoned off the area and later left. Reuters said that an
American spokesman had no further details and therefore Reuters
offered no further information either.

Shortly before those powerful explosions, at about 8:30pm local time
(17:30 GMT) Iraqi Resistance fighters fired two rocket-propelled
grenades at the Dutch Embassy in Iraq late on Friday, hitting
the roof with one and setting it on fire. The blaze was quickly
extinguished, and there were no injuries. Security guards and US
occupation soldiers said the projectile detonated on the roof after
the embassy had closed for the day. Another missed the building,
and two other launchers were found in the garden behind the embassy,
guards said.

Guards fired at the Resistance fighters' vehicle but they escaped,
according to embassy guard Karim az-Zubaydi. Dutch Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Martine de Haan said there were no injuries.

The blast resounded through Baghdad, and a US quick reaction
force from the 1st Armored Division was sent to the scene, the
US occupation command said. Earlier reports said the projectile
was a rocket, but the military said later it was a rocket-
propelled grenade.

"We saw the light of the fire on the roof, and the firefighters
came to the scene and put out the fire on the roof," said 18-year-
old Fadi Ghassan, who lives near the embassy. He said he heard two
explosions.

The Netherlands has about 1,100 occupation troops in Iraq. The
Dutch Embassy staff were pulled out of Baghdad before the invasion
of Iraq in March, but they returned in August. In October the
government again withdrew most of the staff after an attack on the
United Nations' Baghdad headquarters and other bombings. The embassy
is now conducting most of its business out of Amman, Jordan. Only
five Dutch employees are manning the embassy. Four were in Baghdad
Friday, but none was in the building at the time of the attack, the
Dutch foreign ministry said.

Earlier on Friday, Iraqi Resistance fighters attacked a column of
four US occupation armored vehicles in the city of Mosul, northern
Iraq Friday morning. The Resistance fighters used rocket-propelled
grenades (RPGs) in their attack, which destroyed one of the vehicles.
It is unknown whether there were any casualties among the American
troops. Eye witnesses reported that they saw a Volkswagen car
speeding away from the site of the attack at the time the US column
was passing by.

Iraqi Resistance fighters attacked a checkpoint of the puppet so-
called civil defense forces near Kirkuk on Friday. Puppet "civil
defense" Major General Anwar Hama Amin, the commander of the
American appointed organization, told the Agence France Presse
(AFP) that one of the Resistance fighters was martyred in
the attack and another wounded in the assault. Amin said "six
individuals on a pickup truck attacked a civil defense checkpoint
in Sulayman Bak. The members of the force returned fire hitting
one and wounding another. The other attackers were able to escape."

This was the second attack at a check point in the Kirkuk area
in two days, the day before having witnessed an attack on a check
point 90km south of Kirkuk.

Also in Kirkuk on Friday, US occupation forces defused an
explosives-laden car on the main road south of al-Huwayjah,
50km southwest of Kirkuk, frequented by American military
convoys and oil tank trucks. The tank trucks make the run
up the road taking oil from the Kirkuk oil fields to the
refinery in Bayji.

Iraqi Resistance fighters fired two rocket-propelled grenades at
the Dutch Embassy in Iraq on Friday, hitting the roof with one
and setting it on fire. The blaze was quickly extinguished, and
there were no injuries. Security guards and US occupation soldiers
said the projectile detonated on the roof after the embassy had
closed for the day. Another missed the building, and two other
launchers were found in the garden behind the embassy, guards said.

Guards fired at the Resistance fighters' vehicle but they escaped,
according to embassy guard Karim az-Zubaydi. Dutch Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Martine de Haan said there were no injuries.

The blast resounded through Baghdad, and a US quick reaction
force from the 1st Armored Division was sent to the scene, the
US occupation command said. Earlier reports said the projectile
was a rocket, but the military said later it was a rocket-
propelled grenade.

"We saw the light of the fire on the roof, and the firefighters
came to the scene and put out the fire on the roof," said 18-year-
old Fadi Ghassan, who lives near the embassy. He said he heard two
explosions.

The Netherlands has about 1,100 occupation troops in Iraq. The
Dutch Embassy staff were pulled out of Baghdad before the invasion
of Iraq in March, but they returned in August. In October the
government again withdrew most of the staff after an attack
on the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters and other bombings.
The embassy is now conducting most of its business out of Amman,
Jordan. Only five Dutch employees are manning the embassy. Four
were in Baghdad Friday, but none was in the building at the time
of the attack, the Dutch foreign ministry said.

In al-Khalidiyah, 80km west of Baghdad, some 700 people rallied to
demand that the American occupation forces lift the curfew imposed
on their town and that the aggressor forces halt their house raids
and free the citizens whom they've taken prisoner. The AFP reported
that the demonstrators started their march through the streets of
the town after afternoon prayers in the Mosque of Khalid ibn al-
Walid, and rallied in front of the American military position in
the area. No clashes were reported.

`Abd ar-Rahman Ibrahim, Imam of the mosque said that the peaceful
march had been arranged because "the Americans have turned the
town into a field of operations. They fire guns at houses and
have arrested a number of women. There's a dusk-to-dawn curfew
too. Where are those who fall ill supposed to go?" The Imam said
that the Americans had imposed the curfew three days previous after
three occupation soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division were killed
in a roadside bombing.

An official in the Iraqi oil industry has reported that Resistance
fighters attacked an oil pipeline carrying crude oil from a Kirkuk
oilfield to the main refinery area in Bayji and ad-Durah on Friday
morning. The Dow Jones network quoted an official as saying that
an explosion occurred near al-Fatihah area, 240km north of Baghdad.
The source noted that the blast did not affect the refining
industry, since there is sufficient reserves, he claimed, to
continue supplying the refineries for a few days.

In ar-Ramadi, west of Baghdad, an number of shopkeepers have
reported receiving threats that said that if they did not stop
working with the Americans within 10 days they would be killed.

Meanwhile the US military commander of the so-called Central
Command, General John Abizaid, expressed the expectation that
Iraqi Resistance activities would increase as summer approaches.
The American commander linked the expected increase in Resistance
to the American plan for a show in mid-summer of a so-called
"transfer of power" to Iraqis.

US sources now admit that the US occupation of Iraq will continue
at least until 2006. But since the current regime in the occupied
country, in which US proconsul L. Paul Bremer oversees a puppet
so-called governing council, is obviously a US imperial imposition
on the country, the "transfer of power" charade is aimed at setting
up an alternative puppet government that other western powers will
be willing to recognize, thereby granting the US occupation the
legitimacy, cover, and help that it wants as it sets about remaking
the map of the Arab region. Such at any rate, is Washington's hope.

Washington's fear, as reflected in Abizaid's remarks, is that the
Iraqi Resistance will make a mockery out of US claims that any new
puppet regime "represents the will of the Iraqi people."

Special Report: (Based on an Associated Press dispatch
------------------------------------------------------

by John J. Lumpkin)

US occupation forces use electronic jamming techniques to deflect
bombs so they explode among Iraqis while protect their own men.

Next time you read that a roadside bomb exploded near a convoy or
patrol of the US occupation forces, but killed only Iraqi civilians
in the area, you should probably conclude that this was the effect
of technology being deliberately employed by the aggressor forces,
protecting their own men while killing off Iraqi civilians. It's a
method that the Associated Press says has been extensively used by
the Zionists.

In a story for the AP, John Lumpkin reported on 30 January 2004 that
US occupation soldiers riding in convoys in Iraq "are relying on
electronic 'jammers' to help protect against the roadside bombs"
but that "sometimes" the jammers only delay the detonation of bombs,
and as a result the explosives go off after the US convoy has passed,
killing Iraqi bystanders.

The jammers work by preventing a remotely transmitted signal - say,
rigged from a cell phone - from detonating an explosive when the
bomber presses the button. Depending on the distance, power, and
design of the jammer, some might prevent the bomb from going off.
Others might instead set it off before or after the convoy passes,
so that the bomb explodes among Iraqi bystanders.

The extent to which the devices are used by the aggressor forces
is secret, but it was this technology that Lumpkin says saved
Pakistan's leader from a recent assassination attempt and it is
definitely "being used in Iraq."

General Peter J. Schoomaker, the US army's chief of staff
acknowledged their use in testimony this week before the House
Armed Services Committee, but he declined to discuss the bomb
defenses in detail. The military does not want to provide useful
information to the Iraqi Resistance. Congressman Gene Taylor,
a Democrat from Mississippi suggested that few are being used.
Taylor told Schoomaker. "The percentage of vehicles that have
some form of electronic jammer - it is minuscule, and I know it,
you know it, and the Iraq insurgents know it." But Schoomaker
pointed out that protection for the occupation troops doesn't
depend on universal use. "Every vehicle doesn't have to be
equipped," he said. "You have to have groups of vehicles that
have that kind of capability, under an umbrella."

Roadside bombs have been primary killers of US occupation troops
in Iraq. Many go off under passing convoys, killing or injuring
the occupants of one of the vehicles. But in some cases, they
have gone off only after a convoy has passed.

That can be a sign that a jammer on one of the vehicles did its job,
said James Atkinson, head of the Granite Island Group, a Gloucester,
Mass.-based security and counterespionage firm.

Anti-bomb jammers have been in use since the early 1980s, Atkinson
said. Depending on their sophistication, jammers can cost from
hundreds to millions of dollars. Most can be powered by a car
engine. Some work by transmitting on frequencies that bombers are
known to use. Guerrillas frequently rig remote-controlled detonators
out of garage door openers, car alarm remotes or cellular phones,
Atkinson said. Others, called barrage jammers, put out signals
on a wide range of frequencies, he said. These will knock cellular
phones and CB radios off the air in a given area. Both kinds can
cause a premature or late detonation of a bomb, or prevent it from
going off entirely.

"When you see a car bomb that goes off several blocks away from
its intended target, it's usually a dead giveaway it was jammed,"
Atkinson said.

Jamming devices carried in the motorcade of Pakistan's President
Pervez Musharraf delayed the detonation of a huge bomb that exploded
moments after his limousine passed over a bridge near the capital 14
December 2003, Pakistani intelligence has said.

Since then, Pakistan has imported more jamming devices for security
of VIPs, a senior government official told The Associated Press
on the condition of anonymity Thursday. He refused to give further
details, including where the devices were imported from, citing
security reasons.

In occupied Palestine, a special unit in the Zionist "Ministry of
Defense" developed jamming technology in the early 1990s and used
it extensively in southern Lebanon in the mid- to late 1990s in
an effort to neutralize roadside charges placed by the Hezb Allah
Resistance. In the end, of course, that effort proved a failure
and the Zionist forces were routed from most of southern Lebanon
in May 2000.

It is unclear what defenses exist against other kinds of bombs,
such as those that rely on timers or are hard-wired to a switch.
Pakistani officials claimed their jamming devices also interrupted
a timer.

Sources:

al-Arab al-Yawm daily newspaper, Amman, Jordan,
Saturday, 31 January 2004.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/
20040130/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_blast_6
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040130/
ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq_jammers&cid=540&ncid=1480
http://www.aljazeera.net/news/arabic/2004/1/1-30-17.htm
http://us.moheet.com/asp/cunt_show.asp?lol=1183173
http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle. jsp?type=
topNews&locale=ar_ME&storyID=4252156
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IdNews=23906

-----

Saturday, 31 January 2004.

An Iraqi Resistance bomb planted on a road exploded Saturday as a
US occupation army convoy passed by, killing three US occupation
soldiers, the US military occupation said. A military spokesman
said an improvised bomb blew up about 25 miles southwest of Kirkuk,
near a convoy of the 4th Infantry Division. The bomb was planted
on the road linking Kirkuk with Tikrit. The US military stated
that they had disarmed a second explosive device 300 meters from
the main US regional military base at the occupied Kirkuk airport.

In Mosul an Iraqi Resistance car bomb exploded Saturday outside a
puppet police station, killing 13 people and wounding more than 40,
witnesses and hospital staff said. Four of the wounded were high
ranking officers in the puppet police force. Witnesses in Mosul
saw severed limbs and decapitated bodies on the street in front of
the police station. Windows of buildings were shattered and plumes
of smoke could be seen in the area. The façade of the puppet
police station was destroyed by the powerful blast. After the
explosion, occupation forces sealed off the area and streets
leading to it. The commander of the American 101st Airborne
Division arrived on the scene as his soldiers were closing off
the area.

Some witnesses, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it appeared
that a car drove through a security barricade in front of the puppet
police station before exploding outside the building.

Eyewitness Muhammad 'Abd al-Karim, 39, who works in a shop opposite
the puppet police station, said that an Opal car came racing into the
area. He said that the driver was able to get it through a barricade
and then he detonated his car in the huge explosion.

A part of the façade of the building was destroyed and two lower
floors totally devastated. A large concrete block that had been
put in place to guard the police station from attack was blown on
top of the martyrdom car by the force of the blast. In all five
cars, including the martyrdom vehicle, were set ablaze. Al-Jazeera
television network said the pieces of the car apparently carrying
the bomb were found 300 yards away.

Saturday was a pay day and the puppet police station was crowded
with staff at the time of the midmorning attack, said puppet
police Lieutenant Muhammad Fadil

One puppet policeman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the
blast was so powerful that there were casualties not only on the
street but also inside the building. Among the wounded were two
puppet policemen with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, one, with the
rank of Major, and one Lieutenant, according to Dr. Najm 'Abdallah
Shu`ayb, head of the Emergency Room at Mosul Hospital. Puppet
police Captain Salim Dawud confirmed Dr. Shu`ayb's information.
Another physician in the hospital, Dr. Haytham 'Abdallah, said
that four of the wounded were in serious condition.

The attack occurred a day before the start of the four-day Eid
al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice.

A bomb in the al-Baladiyat area of Baghdad on Saturday killed at
least five people including three Palestinians and others were
wounded when the crowded and largely Palestinian neighborhood was
struck by what was apparently a mortar round. A spokesman for the
Palestinian community in the neighborhood told the World Today
Radio (Radiu al-`Alam al-an) that a mortar shell had been fired
at an apartment in a residential building, killing the three
people. He added that more than 1,300 Palestinian families live
in al-Baladiyat neighborhood. Witnesses said that at least seven
wounded persons were taken to hospital.

Late on Saturday evening Reuters said that eyewitnesses in Baghdad
were reporting a second explosion in a Baghdad neighborhood of
Baladiyat that left at least one Iraqi dead and many others injured.
It was the same area where the earlier bomb had gone off.

According to al-Jazeera TV, five Palestinians were killed in the
mortar attack and five others wounded when the first mortar shell
struck the largely Palestinian residential building. A second
mortar round landed between two buildings.

Al-Jazeera's correspondent noted the absence of any Iraqi puppet
police or US occupation troops, as well as the lack of ambulances
in the area of the blast. Al-Baladiyat neighborhood is home to
many Palestinian refugees of the 1948 occupation of Palestine. The
al-Jazeera correspondent said that bodies of those killed had been
taken to the al-Quds mosque and that they would be buried after
Eid al-Adha.

The al-Jazeera correspondent said that the President of the
Palestinian National Committee in the area, Dr. Qusay Rif`at
said "We don't want to accuse any party in particular of being
behind this attack, but we did read on the remnants of the
two mortar shells the sentence `Made in USA.'"

Also on Saturday, a bomb exploded under a senior puppet police
officer's car parked in front of his house in Baghdad. "We woke
up frightened when we heard a big explosion," said puppet police
Colonel 'Adnan Radif al-'Ani, who heads a quick response field
collaborating with the occupation. He said the bomb was apparently
triggered by a timer.

"Maybe I was targeted because I am working with the Americans,"
he told The Associated Press. The AP claimed that the bomb
"slightly injured" five children in the street.

Abu Ghurayb near Baghdad, site of a US-run concentration camp and
military base, came under mortar attack on Saturday. US forces
returned fire at what they said was the source of the incoming
mortar shells. Houses near the American camp were reportedly
damaged. There was no information on casualties, if any. The US
forces keep no account of Iraqi civilian casualties.

Earlier, Iraqi Resistance fighters attacked US vehicles in the Abu
Ghurayb area. As is standard practice for the American aggressors,
they responded to the attack by randomly opening fire in every
direction. Four Iraqi cars were totally destroyed in the US attack.

Meanwhile in Tazah, an area in the southern part of the city of
Kirkuk, Mahdi Muhammad, deputy chairman of the Turkoman party the
Turkoman Front in Tazah was assassinated and the chairman, Husayn
Mali, seriously injured by unknown gunmen who opened fire on their
car, according to Kirkuk's puppet police commander Major General
Turhan Yusuf. Mali was taken to hospital. The Turkoman Front,
like the Arab ethnic groups in the city, opposes the plans of
powerful Kurdish chauvinist parties (whose leaders sit on the
US puppet so-called Governing Council), to partition Iraq into
a "federal state" and to annex Kirkuk to the Kurdish statelet.

On the day of that assassination, the Iraqi puppet police had been
placed on high alert in anticipation of Resistance attacks Turhan
Yusuf also stated. He told the media that more than 5,000 of his
puppet policemen in 15 police stations in the city had been put a
condition of heightened readiness as the Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha
approached.

In Ba`qubah, the Iraqi puppet police reported that a 38-year old
Iraqi named 'Abd al-Qadir Salah who was a specialist in the assembly
of electronic appliances, had been killed in a bomb explosion in his
home in the city on Friday evening. They speculate that he had been
trying to assemble a bomb at the time.

In the Haague, the Netherlands, the Dutch newspaper the NRC
Handelsblad reported that more than an hour prior to Friday's
rocket attack on the Dutch embassy in Baghdad, embassy staff were
alerted that an attack that their building was imminent. Three
rocket-propelled grenades struck the embassy on Friday evening.
Having received prior warning, however, the Dutch diplomats were
able to leave the building before the attack occurred. The unnamed
Dutch diplomat in Baghdad who was cited as the source of the story
did not state who it was that alerted the embassy staff. The Dutch
Foreign Ministry had no comment on the report.

On Saturday, the eve of the Islamic festival Eid al-Adha, US
occupation forces released a token number of 120 prisoners
from the Abu Ghurayb concentration camp near Baghdad. In all,
the occupation reportedly has some 28,000 prisoners in its
vast network of prison camps across the country.

Islamic groups in the city of al-Fallujah circulated a declaration
on Saturday outlining their plan for taking over control of Iraqi
cities after the withdrawal of US occupation forces from them. The
declaration said that the US is preparing to retreat in defeat from
the country having been vanquished by the Mujahideen.

The declaration said that the Mujahideen would take control over
the entrances and exits from liberated cities and impose a curfew
for a period of three days. Houses of stooges will be surrounded,
and they will be arrested. "Therefore we advise them to leave Iraq."
It said that "people who are true in the police, security services,
and traffic control will be allowed to continue at their jobs." It
said that "incompetents and former Baathists who had returned to
their jobs in return for becoming lackeys of the occupation will
be thrown out." The declaration threatened to reply harshly to any
person who opens fire on the Mujahideen as they deploy.

The declaration said that there would be formed a "council of
the country made up of all the scholars of Islamic law, medicine,
engineering, and civil law who have not offered their hands to
the occupation."

"This declaration is being observed and anyone who tears it up will
be found out and subjected to a harsh reckoning, however long it
takes," the document warned.

Men with their faces covered distributed the declaration which was
signed by 12 fundamentalist organizations and groups including:
The Iraqi Islamic Patriotic Resistance [al-Muqawamah al-Wataniyah
al-Islamiyah al-`Iraqiyah], the Salafi Movement for Propagation
and Jihad [al-Harakah as-Salafiyah li-d-Da`wah wa-l-Jihad], the
al-Qari`ah Organization [Tanzim al-Qari`ah], the Army of Partisans
of the Sunnah [Jaysh Ansar as-Sunnah], and the Army of Muhammad
[Jaysh Muhammad].

Sources:

al-Arab al-Yawm daily newspaper, Amman, Jordan,
Sunday, 1 February 2004.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040131/
ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_explosion&cid=540&ncid=716
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040131/
ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_americans_killed&cid=540&ncid=716
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IdNews=23906
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IdNews=23913
http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=23919
http://www.aljazeera.net/news/arabic/2004/2/2-1-1.htm

http://www.albasrah.net/
http://www.albasrah.net/moqawama/english/
resistancereport_29-31012004.htm