11/15/2004|||110051404755454373||||||

FALLUJAH LATEST

The Times' defence correspondent, Michael Evans provides a concise overview of the battlefield tactics.
Reporter James Hider files a vivid account of insurgents on the run (reg required for both links):

THE last hours of the mujahidin are terrifying. With the city they once ruled with the absolute authority of medieval caliphs now overrun by American and Iraqi troops, they have to keep moving. To pause even for a few minutes can mean instant death from an unseen enemy.

A group of 15 fighters dressed in black and carrying an array of weapons ducked into a two-storey house in war-torn southern Fallujah yesterday morning. Their movement was picked up by an unmanned spy plane that beamed back live footage to a control centre on the edge of the city. Within minutes, an airstrike was called and the house disappeared in a giant plume of grey smoke.

From a house across the road, the explosion flushed out another group of guerrillas. Deafened by the blast, they stumbled out into the street, formed a ragged line and started off on the marathon to postpone their deaths, the drone dogging their every step.

“The rats are trying to move about,” Major Tim Karcher, of the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, said as the figures flitted from street to street, seeking cover close to walls.

Sometimes they can throw off the drone, ducking out of sight of the men in whose power it is to summon FA18 fighter-bombers or 155mm artillery strikes. But they have no way of knowing. And, increasingly, as they run they are coming into the crosshairs of American snipers, crackshots such as Sergeant Marc Veen and his long-barrelled rifle, Lucille."

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/11/fallujah-latest-times-defence.html|||11/15/2004 10:08:00 am|||||||||

|||