U.S. Raids in 2 Sunni Cities Anger Clerics and Residents
By EDWARD WONG
NYT, 12 October 2004

EXCERPT: The American military staged a series of aggressive strikes on Tuesday in insurgent strongholds west of Baghdad, including firing missiles into the streets of Falluja and conducting raids alongside Iraqi commandos in seven mosques in Ramadi. The wave of assaults inflamed Sunni Muslim leaders and residents of the cities, who said innocent civilians had been killed or arrested in the operations. Warplanes attacked twice in Falluja in the early hours, with the first strike demolishing one of Iraq's most celebrated kebab restaurants, Haji Hussein, named after the owner. Mr. Hussein's son and his nephew, both working as night watchmen, were killed in the attack, residents said. The second attack came about four hours later in another neighborhood, hitting an empty house and injuring two neighbors, nearby residents said. The American military issued a statement asserting that the site of the first strike had been a meeting place for insurgents associated with the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who the military says is leading attacks against Americans and Iraqis working with them. In the second assault, missiles were said to have been aimed at a safe house used by the Zarqawi network. "Intelligence sources tracked and confirmed that Zarqawi associates were using the safe house at the time of the strike," the military said. In nearby Ramadi, American troops and Iraqi soldiers arrested a Sunni cleric, Sheik Abdul Aleem Saidy, and his son Osama, members of one of the country's most famous religious families, said spokesmen for the Muslim Scholars Association, a prominent group made up mostly of Sunni clerics. Among the Iraqi soldiers involved in the mosque raids were former members of Kurdish and Shiite militias, said one spokesman, Abdul Satter Abdul Jabbar. "There is a sense of sectarianism in this," he said