Enlarge imageBy Nameer Nouredeen
TAL AFAR, Iraq (Reuters) - Thousands of Iraqi and U.S. troops launched an assault on the northern city of Tal Afar on Saturday to rid it of insurgents and Iraq’s government said it planned attacks on rebels in four other towns.
"At 2 a.m. today (2300 BST), acting on my orders, Iraqi forces commenced an operation to remove all remaining terrorist elements from the city of Tal Afar," Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said in a statement, adding that U.S. forces, which bombed the town from the air overnight, were acting in support.
During the day, however, a dust storm hindered the offensive, officers in Tal Afar said.
Jaafari said the troops were responding to appeals for help from "all the different religious and ethnic elements in Tal Afar." The town, west of the northern city of Mosul and near the Syrian border, is mostly populated by ethnic Turkmen.
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Hospital sources in Tal Afar said the assault started with U.S. air strikes on the centre, adding that there were U.S. tanks surrounding the area and gunfire was heard overnight.
Civilians have been taken out of the town in recent days as military operations were stepped up, officials said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have long said Tal Afar was being used as a conduit for equipment and foreign Sunni Arab fighters smuggled in from Syria to fight the Shi’ite and Kurdish-led Iraqi government and occupying U.S. forces across the country.
Beyond any military value, the political importance of an operation in which Iraqi forces are shown on television taking the lead role is considerable; in power for five months and facing an election in December, Jaafari’s much-criticised government is keen to show it is capable of restoring security.
For Washington, anxious to persuade American voters that it can bring troops home soon as Iraqi forces are trained up, the operation is also a useful showcase for the new Iraqi army.
U.S. forces which have taken the lead in all similar major offensives in the past, such as that on Falluja last November, had previously taken Tal Afar but subsequently pulled out again.
Jaafari stressed the lead role played by Iraqi troops. U.S. military spokesmen declined comment. Iraqi television showed repeated film of Iraqi troops in Tal Afar with no sign of U.S. soldiers.
Defence Minister Saadoun Dulaimi said that after the assault, government forces were ready to strike insurgents in four other northwestern towns.
"CRIMINALS AND BLOODSUCKERS"
After telling a news conference that troops had killed 141 insurgents and captured 197 in the past two days at Tal Afar, he said: "We tell our people in Ramadi, Samarra, Rawa and Qaim that we are coming; there will be no refuge for the terrorists, criminals and bloodsuckers."
He added that of 17 battalions -- several thousand troops -- involved in the operation, all but three were Iraqi.
Dulaimi gave no indication of when operations might start in the other towns, but said action would be swift.
"This operation will take less time than you think ... You will see in the next two days that our forces are capable and will flush the terrorists out and wipe them out."
While the attack was under way, Jordanian Prime Minister Adnan Badran flew to Baghdad, making the first visit by a top Arab official since the U.S. invasion in 2003, and Jaafari urged more to come.
"This visit means a great deal to us and marks a great political turning point. I call on all the Arab states to follow the Jordanian initiative. Today’s visit has broken a barrier and sent a political message," he said.
Iraq has criticised fellow Arab countries for failing to halt Islamic militants flowing into the country or staunch funding for the Sunni insurgency.
U.S. ally Jordan, like most other Arab states ruled by Sunni Muslims, has in the past echoed unease at the close relationship of the new Iraqi authorities with Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran.
Jaafari and U.S. commanders had warned that a full assault on Tal Afar was imminent. "The terrorist elements being targeted by this operation are guilty of blatant crimes against its people. They are enemies of Iraq," Jaafari said.
The insurgents are drawn mainly from Iraq’s Sunni Arab community. Sunnis account for some 20 percent of the population and have dominated Iraqi politics for decades, under ousted leader Saddam Hussein and before.
A U.S. military spokesman said last week intelligence reports suggested some 20 percent of insurgents in Tal Afar were "foreign fighters," but gave no details.
(Additional reporting by Sebastian Alison, Mussab Al- Khairalla, Mariam Karouny, Alastair Macdonald and Omar al-Ibadi in Baghdad, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul)
