Press Roundup for Sunday
Guerrillas in al-Anbar province killed a US serviceman on Saturday. Anthony Shadid reports that Abdullah al-Janabi, fundamentalist Sunni leader of the Muslim mini-theocracy in pre-assault Fallujah, claims that the US military action has attracted hundreds of new fighters to the anti-American struggle in the Sunni Arab heartland. Shadid reports fighting in Mosul, where guerrillas used a car bomb to wound 8 US soldiers. The US targeted a guerrilla position with a 500-pound bomb,in return. In the northern city of Kirkuk, guerrillas used a car bomb to injure two US servicemen and a translator, and in nearby Hawija, two other US troops were wounded by a roadside bomb. A car bomber wounded two US troops in Baiji. In the city of Hit, west of Baghdad, guerrillas ambushed Iraqi National Guards, killing 7. The Marines announced that there had been clashes between guerrillas and Marines on Friday in Ramadi. On Saturday, as well, there were high-profile assassinations of Shiite clerics and a high Iraqi official.
Al-Hayat says that one of the leaders of the Asociation for Muslim Scholars, Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, said that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been present at Fallujah until shortly before the recent military campaign in the city, when he escaped.
Other incidents, including the assassination of three high-ranking Iraqi police officials, and the killing of four Kirkuk city employees, are reported by Reuters.
The Iraqi killer of Reserve Navy Lt. Kylan Jones-Huffman has been brought to justice in an Iraqi court. Although he has since changed his story, he at one point admitted to killing Jones-Huffman with a bullet through the back of the neck while the latter was stuck in traffic in downtown Hilla. The assassin said that he felt that Jones-Huffman “looked Jewish.” The fruits of hatred sowed in the Middle East by aggressive and expansionist Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza against the Palestinians and in south Lebanon against Shiites continue to be harvested by Americans.
(Some readers have written to say that the Iraqi assassin’s association of all Jews with the misdeeds of the rightwing hawks in the Occupied Territories is outrageous. I, of course, entirely agree. It is the essence of bigotry to blame all members of a group for the actions of a few.)