From Aljazeera
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/killingiraqicivilians22dec03.shtml
Dec. 22, 2003

American soldiers killed an Iraqi woman when they blew up the door of a house during a raid in a town near Iraq's border with Syria.

"Forces encountered resistance to entry in one target location and used a door breaching charge to gain access to the target through a reinforced steel door.

The blast resulted in the death of one Iraqi female and injuries to two other females in the house," the US military said in a statement on Monday.

It added that the incident, which occurred in the western town of Rawa, was under investigation.

The US Third Armoured Cavalry Regiment (3rd ACR) kicked off "Operations Rifles Fury" in Rawa, a mission aimed "to kill or capture anti-coalition forces and destroy terrorist training camps".

The occupation forces carried out 17 raids on Sunday and detained 81 people. Eleven of them were considered "high value targets".

The raid was part of a nationwide dragnet aimed at capturing resistance activists.

In the province of Anbar, the military said it had arrested 96 "terrorists" on Sunday.

In Falluja, 50km west of Baghdad, the 82nd Airborne Division carried out seven "cordon-and-search" operations and arrested 14 people involved in "financing and recruiting foreign fighters".

Ex-officer nabbed
In another success, US occupation forces have arrested a former top officer in Saddam Hussein's security services, suspected of directing anti-American attacks north of Baghdad, US officers said on Monday.

The man, a major-general in the former Iraqi intelligence department, was detained during overnight searches in Baquba, 65km north of Baghdad, they said.

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, said hundreds of Iraqis, including some resistance leaders, had been arrested following the capture of ousted leader Saddam Hussein. Myers also said Saddam was not cooperating with US authorities who had been interrogating him since he was caught on 13 December near his hometown of Tikrit.

Myers told the TV programme Fox News on Sunday: "We've put our best interrogators on him. The only word I have is that he is not being cooperative."

He told CNN television that some of the information had come from the briefcase seized when US forces found Saddam hiding in a hole under a farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit.

US troops have been cracking down on anti-occupation fighters in the week since Saddam was captured, although top officials have warned that resistance was expected to continue.

Resistance fighters have killed 200 US soldiers since US President George Bush announced an end to major combat on 1 May.

Insight on resistance
Myers, who paid a surprise visit to Baghdad last week, said he did not have a precise count of those detained "because it goes on."

"Some of the information gleaned when we picked up Saddam Hussein led to a better understanding of the structure of the resistance from the former regime elements and we have actually picked up more than several hundred at this point," Myers said.

Myers was later quoted as saying there had been "over 200 people detained based on that intelligence, probably more to come."

Details of capture
More details have emerged about the circumstances of Saddam's arrest on 13 December.

A tribal chief in the northern Iraqi village of al-Dawr where Saddam was captured claimed the ousted leader hid in the same farm where he had sought refuge as a young man in 1959 after a botched assassination attempt on then head of state Abd al-Karim Qasim.

Shaikh Hassib Shahib Ahmad, head of the al-Muwasat tribe, said the farm belonged to Qaiss Namach Jassam, the son of Jassam Namach who sheltered Saddam 44 years ago, before he fled Iraq after the failed murder attempt.

"Namach was offering the customary hospitality of the Arabs to a man who was wounded and in danger," he said. Qaiss and his brothers were arrested after Saddam's capture by US troops, said the shaikh.

Web posted at: http://www.rense.com/general46/assass.htm