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US military searches Iraqi homes

Iraqi motorists raise their hands at a checkpoint prior to being frisked by US troops near Fallujah, 80kms west of Baghdad Iraq, Sunday. Hundreds of US troops backed by tanks and helicopters raided the restive town of Fallujah and neighboring towns arresting suspected militia leaders and seizing illegal weapons in a major operation. PHOTO: AP

US troops swept through towns and villages west of Baghdad after dawn yesterday, arresting suspected resistance leaders and pursuing a concerted search for outlawed weapons.

It was the second day of a forceful new operation called Desert Scorpion based on intelligence pinpointing opponents of the US-led coalition in Iraq following the expiry on Sunday of an amnesty program for people turning in heavy weapons.

Families of those arrested warned resistance would only increase.

Meanwhile, a US Central Command spokesman denied reports that US soldiers were wounded in an ambush on a military vehicle near the town of Balad north of Baghdad.

Lieutenant Ryan Fitzgerald said initial accounts indicated the vehicle caught fire because of "mechanical failure," but he did not rule out the possibility that it may have been attacked by insurgents.

With observation helicopters circling a few hundred yards above them, more than 100 military police and infantrymen in 30 Humvees and four Bradley fighting vehicles poured into the small town of Khaldiyah, 70km west of Baghdad.

They targeted six homes and took away nine men, acting on information about where suspected anti-American insurgents were hiding and illegal weapons stockpiled.

On the outskirts of Ramadi, about 30km farther west, troops seized four brothers from one home and two brothers from a neighboring family.

There were no immediate reports of injuries in the raids.

In the Ramadi area, the families were still asleep when the armored column rumbled into their village at 5:15am, blaring an Arabic-language warning from loudspeakers: "These are coalition forces. Please stay in your homes and open your doors. Thank you for your cooperation."

Troops bound men and women in the two houses with plastic handcuffs and moved them into a nearby field while they searched the homes, residents said. They found one rifle.

Omar Mishrif Saleh, an older brother of the detainees, said the soldiers knew what they were looking for and sought out the house of his brother who had served in Saddam Hussein's army.

"Someone must have informed on us," he said, although he denied that his arrested brothers, aged 20 to 30, were engaged in anti-US activities.

Minutes after the soldiers left, the Saleh house was crowded with sympathizing neighbors who tried to comfort the mother, who was weeping and trembling.

"The resistance is going to increase," said Abdul Qader Fahd, 30, a teacher. "Dealing with civilians like this is terrorism."

In Khaldiyah, US commanders said they were acting on a tip from an Iraqi man captured after he and two other men fired rocket-propelled grenades Saturday night at a routine US patrol near an abandoned Iraqi ammunition dump. The other two men escaped and the prisoner pointed to two homes he said the insurgents had been using as a hideout.

When military police entered the homes, they found only families and a few hundred rounds of pistol and assault rifle ammunition buried in the backyard of one of them.

Female military police officers and medics stayed with the women and children as the troops searched the house, finding Iraqi Republican Guard uniforms and other military items, but nothing illegal.

In an old box used to transport artillery shells, the soldiers found strips of highly explosive cordite that had been emptied out of artillery shells.

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