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[edit] Prelude
With the sectarian fighting ongoing, and an operation to curb the killings in Baghdad started a few days before, the Americans were ready to take on the insurgents in the capital of Al Anbar province, Ramadi. Since the fall of Fallujah in 2004, Ramadi had been the center of the insurgency in Iraq. The city had been under the control of the insurgency except for a few places were the Marines had set up remote outposts, that were virtually under siege. Law and order had broken down, and street battles were common. Word of an offensive already gotten to the 400,000 citizens of the city who feared another Fallujah style attack. But the Americans decided this time to take it slowly and softly, without using heavy close air support, artillery or tank fire. US troops had “cordoned off” the city of 400,000, located 110 kilometres west of Baghdad, by June 10. US air strikes on residential areas were escalating, and US troops took to the streets with loudspeakers to warn civilians of a fierce impending attack. The objective of the operation was to take full control of a city that had been out of the hands of the American military for the better part of two years.
[edit] The Battle
Preparations for the attack were under way for weeks. On June 17, there were several skirmishes with the insurgents which killed two American soldiers. As the offensive opened on June 18, two columns of U.S. mechanized troops pushed north into the city's suburbs with Iraqi Army units, cutting off two major entrances to the city for the first time during the war. At the same time, 3rd Battalion 8th Marines held on to the western half of the downtown area and patrolled the river and its two bridges (the only northbound exits from the city) on foot and in boats, and the 1-506th Infantry, 1-6th Infantry, and 1-35th Armor continued to hold the main thoroughfare and the eastern exits. 3rd Battalion 5th Marines had the task of taking control of the so-called "IED Alley", the highway connecting Baghdad and Ramadi. They did this by setting up outposts along "Route Michigan". Hundreds of American and Iraqi troops, backed by AC-130 Gunships overhead, pushed into an insurgent-controlled section of eastern Ramadi. Six insurgents were thought to have been killed by fire from the Spectre gunship in the initial hours of the operation. Sporadic gunfire between U.S. troops and insurgent snipers echoed throughout the neighborhood. The troops were trying to establish a new outpost in Ramadi's eastern Mulaab neighborhood that would allow U.S. and Iraqi troops to better patrol a troublesome area where insurgents had frequently attacked. The outpost would be less than a mile deeper into the city from their current base. Soldiers also scoured through dozens of homes in the area, finding several weapons caches and equipment used to construct roadside bombs. During the first day of the battle only one American soldier suffered a broken leg from a roadside bomb. But that would soon change.
At the beginning of July the American forces managed to push deep enough in to the city to reach the Ramadi General Hospital. Members of al-Qaida in Iraq had been using the Ramadi General Hospital, a seven-story building with some 250 beds, to treat their wounded and fire on U.S. troops in the area, the Marines had reported. They said wounded Iraqi police officers who had been taken to the hospital were later found beheaded. Though there was no resistance during the operation, the Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment said they found about a dozen triggering devices for roadside bombs hidden above the tiled ceiling of one office. They knocked down dozens of locked doors and searched medicine chests and storage closets for additional weapons. Hospitals are considered off-limits in traditional warfare. In western Ramadi, however, insurgents have fired on Marines from the rooftop of a women and children's hospital so often that patients were moved to a wing with fewer exposed windows.
Very soon the American forces were bogged down in Ramadi and heavy street fighting ensued throughout the city over the coming months. Many Marines have said the fighing is very intense and house to house fighting is common. The operation had some initial success but the effect that the Americans wanted to achieve did not happen. It turned into insurgent hit and run attacks on the new outposts that were set up, which were sometimes assaulted by as many as 100 insurgents at a time. The main target was the Ramadi Government Center which was sandbagged, barricaded, and full of Marines barricaded inside. Roadside bomb attacks and ambushes of, very rare and very limited, patrols on the streets happened every time the Marines go outside the wire. Sniper attacks had also become more and more lethal over the past months. There were also several suicide-bombing attacks on the outposts.
During the final days, before the end of the latest try to take Ramadi, a large-scale U.S. military operation was conducted from November 13 to November 15, during which a controversial incident happened. Witnesses said that a U.S. airstrike might have killed at least 35 people, including women and children. But the Marines said that an airstrike November 14 hit a bridge about 10 miles east of Ramadi and resulted in no casualties. Instead the Marines said that on the 13th and 14th they killed at least 16 suspected insurgents during the Ramadi operations. Insurgents fired at least three rocket-propelled grenades but overshot and missed U.S. forces. Insurgents and U.S. forces also traded mortar fire, but there were no reports of casualties in that exchange. Later on news photos showed bodies of civilians killed by coalition forces in Ramadi. After that the Marines did not dispute reports of collateral damage. Interviews by a Times correspondent in Ramadi supported earlier eyewitness accounts of civilian deaths during the clashes. The Marines did not respond to inquiries about the number of civilian dead, but acknowledged that it was often difficult to distinguish between insurgents and civilians. They neither responded to inquiries from The Times regarding the number of homes destroyed or tank rounds fired in the fighting. Residents said the houses were in an old Iraqi army officers quarters, and that one of them, in which a number of civilians were killed, was being used as an Internet cafe.
[edit] Aftermath
Two years before the battle, in 2004, then commander of the Marine garrison, MajGen James Mattis, stated that, "if Ramadi fell the whole province goes to hell". Now, more than two years later in mid-September 2006, a classified report by the Pentagon, reported by Col. Pete Devlin, says the province has been lost and there is almost nothing that can be done. Devlin was the chief Intelligence Officer for the Marine units operating in that province. He said not only are military operations facing a stalemate, unable to extend and sustain security beyond the perimeters of their bases, but also local governments in the province have collapsed and the weak central government has almost no presence. On November 28, 2006 another part of the secret Marine Corps intelligence report was published by the Washington Post and said US forces can neither crush the insurgency in western Iraq nor counter the rising popularity of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in the area. According to the report, "the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point that US and Iraqi troops are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar." The report describes Al-Qaeda in Iraq as the "dominant organization of influence" in the province, more important than local authorities, the Iraqi government and US troops "in its ability to control the day-to-day life of the average Sunni." By mid-November at least 75 American soldiers and Marines were killed along with an unknown number of Iraqi soldiers and police and an unknown number of insurgents in fighting in Ramadi. At this point the Battle of Ramadi had been seen as over and lost by the Americans on the ground because the city had not been taken after more than two and a half years of fighting. Sporadic fighting continues, as seen by a battle on November 28, 2006 in which six civilians, including five Iraqi girls, were killed by American Marines after returning fire when two insurgents from a rooftop fired on them. On December 2, 2006 two battalions made up of 2,200 Marines, who were in reserve, were deployed from ships in the Persian Gulf as reinforcements to forces fighting in Al Anbar. Members of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines were sent to help in the fighting in Ramadi. Renewed fighting happened at the beginning of December and on December 6, 2006 in heavy street fighting six American soldiers were killed. Insurgents still remain well entrenched in the city with coalition forces continuing combat operations. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
[edit] Participating Units
- 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry
- 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry
- 1st Battalion, 35th Armor
- 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines
- 1st Battalion, 6th Marines
- 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines
- 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines
- 1-506th Infantry
[edit] References
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Iraq War |
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Prior events
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Invasion and
occupation
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Aftermath
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Iraq since 2003
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United States Army
New Iraqi Army
Mujahideen Shura Council
