WASHINGTON – Following another deadly terror attack by Iraqi extremists, U.S. forces last night launched Operation Iron Hammer in a bid to smash Saddam Hussein’s loyalists.
As part of the operation, U.S. soldiers mounted diversions aimed at drawing the terrorists out of their lairs, where they could be more easily hunted down or killed.
Several of the diversions were activated almost simultaneously last night around Baghdad, said Pentagon officials.
In one dramatic showdown in Baghdad’s western Abu Ghraib suburb, guerrillas drawn from their hiding spot fired mortars at U.S. troops.
As the terrorists fled, other U.S. forces chased them down in Humvees and an Apache helicopter. The chopper fired rockets at the terrorists’ van, killing two people inside.
In another attack south of Baghdad, an AC-130 Spectre gunship and Bradley fighting vehicles destroyed a warehouse that was a terrorist headquarters and storage place.
“The facility is a known meeting, planning, storage and rendezvous point for belligerent elements conducting attacks on coalition forces and infrastructure,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
Two terrorists were killed, and five were captured in the operation. Iraqis tipped U.S. troops to the warehouse’s location.
In a third U.S. assault in Baghdad, First Armored Division troops aimed their 155mm howitzers at a guerrilla mortar team that had targeted the “green zone,” a secure U.S. area.
Other smaller raids launched in Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, were aimed at trapping and taking out guerrilla forces.
Operation Iron Hammer began just hours after terrorists detonated a powerful truck bomb at an Italian military base in Nasiriyah, south of Baghdad.
Eighteen Italians and nine Iraqis were slain in the worst attack on non-American coalition forces since the end of the war.
U.S. and Italian military spokesmen said as many as 10 terrorists were involved in the morning operation, in which a truck crashed through the gates of the compound, followed by a car that is believed to have carried the explosive and then detonated.
The Italians killed in the attack included 12 Carabinieri military police, four soldiers, a civilian contractor and a filmmaker.
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi pledged that the attack would not derail Italy’s mission in Iraq – but opposition leaders urged Berlusconi’s government to withdraw Italian forces.