Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events

Iron Hammer

Here.

U.S. forces in Iraq on Wednesday launched a planned and coordinated operation codenamed Iron Hammer that targeted pro-Saddam loyalists, a senior military source told Fox News.

Based on intelligence collected on the ground, U.S. infantry set a number of traps all over Baghdad (search). Several of those traps — monitored from the air and known as NAIs or Named Areas of Interest — were activated almost simultaneously Wednesday night.

In the most dramatic action, about a dozen Bradley armored vehicles used 25mm cannons to destroy a warehouse used by anti-U.S. forces in southern Baghdad. A special forces AC-130 Spectre gunship also took part from the air, targeting the warehouse with precise fire.

"The facility is a known meeting, planning, storage and rendezvous point for belligerent elements currently conducting attacks on coalition forces and infrastructure," the Pentagon (search) said in a statement from Washington.

"The destruction of this structure will deny enemy forces any use of it in the future."

The attack on the warehouse was one of four strikes in Operation Iron Hammer. According to military sources, the other attacks were:

— U.S. soldiers observed a group of people firing several mortar rounds from a truck, who then tried to drive away. An AH-64 Apache helicopter was called in to follow the fugitives and it fired on the vehicle, hitting it. Two terrorists were killed and five others were captured. Plus, Americans seized an 82mm mortar.

— Infantrymen saw another enemy approach and fire three mortar rounds, aimed at harassing U.S. forces. Americans opened fire using small arms and a Bradley armored vehicle. The vehicle was hit several times but managed to disappear in traffic on a highway.

— An American artillery unit fired 12 rounds of 155mm howitzers against an insurgent mortar team that had fired off a few shots in the direction of the "green zone," where the central Coalition military and civilian authority compound is located in Baghdad. This two-square-mile area had been hit by harassing mortar fire on a number of occasions during the past week.


My prediction: the media will scour the area until they find some innocent person hurt in this crossfire, and give him or her more coverage than Britney Spears. Of course, I'm just a cynic.

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