Subject: Only 100 fighters in the city!!!
From:

FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 10 - American marines called in two airstrikes on
the pair of dingy three-story buildings squatting along Highway 10 on
Wednesday, dropping 500-pound bombs each time. They fired 35 or so
155-millimeter artillery shells, 10 shots from the muzzles of Abrams
tanks and perhaps 30,000 rounds from their automatic rifles. The
building was a smoking ruin.

But the sniper kept shooting.

He - or they, because no one can count the flitting shadows in this
place - kept 150 marines pinned down for the better part of a day. It
was a lesson on the nature of the enemy in this hellish warren of
rubble-strewn streets. Not all of the insurgents are holy warriors
looking for martyrdom. At least a few are highly trained killers who
do their job with cold precision and know how to survive.

"The idea is, he just sits up there and eats a sandwich," said Lt.
Andy Eckert, "and we go crazy trying to find him."

The contest is a deadly one, and two marines in Company B, First
Battalion, Eighth Regiment of the First Marine Expeditionary Force
have been killed by snipers in the past two days as the unit advanced
just half a mile southward to Highway 10 from a mosque they had taken
on Tuesday.

Despite the world-shaking blasts of weaponry as the Americans try to
root out the snipers, this is also a contest of wills in which the
tension rises to a level that seems unbearable, and then rises again.
Marine snipers sit, as motionless as blue herons, for 30 minutes and
stare with crazed intensity into the oversized scopes on their guns.
If so much as a penumbra brushes across a windowsill, they open up.

With the troops' senses tuned to a high pitch, mundane events become
extraordinary. During one bombing, a blue-and-yellow parakeet flew up
to a roof of a captured building and fluttered about in tight circles
before perching on a slumping power line, to the amazement of the
marines assembled there.

On another occasion, the snipers tensed when they heard movement in
the direction of a smoldering building. A cat sauntered out,
unconcerned with anything but making its rounds in the neighborhood.

"Can I shoot it, sir?" a sniper asked an officer.

"Absolutely not," came the reply.

This day started at about 8 a.m., when the marines left the building
where they had been sleeping and headed south toward Highway 10, which
runs from east to west and roughly bisects the town. At the corner of
Highway 10 and Thurthar, the street they were moving along, was a
headquarters building for the Iraqi National Guard that had been taken
over by insurgents.

Almost immediately, they came under fire from a sniper in the minaret
of a mosque just south of them. Someone in a three-story residential
building farther down the street also opened up. The marines made
50-yard dashes and dived for cover, but one of them was cut down,
killed on the spot. It was unclear what direction the fatal bullet had
come from.

"I don't know who it was," Lt. Steven Berch, leader of the fallen
marine's platoon, said of the attacker, "but he was very well
trained."

After two hours of bombardment, the sniper at that mosque ceased
firing. But just around the corner at the famous blue-domed Khulafah
Al Rashid mosque, another sniper was pinning down marines, and
airstrikes were called in on it, too. The issue of striking at mosques
is so sensitive in the Arab world that the American military later
issued a statement saying that the strike on the Khulafah mosque was
unavoidable and that precision munitions merely knocked down a
minaret.

By noon, the marines had worked their way down to the national guard
building, still taking fire from the sniper, or snipers, on the other
side of Main Street. Inside was a sign in Arabic that said: "Long live
the mujahedeen." Soon the marines had spray-painted another sign over
it: "Long live the muj killers."

But for the next five hours, they could not kill whoever was running
from window to window and firing at them from the other side of Main
Street, despite the expenditure of enormous amounts of ammunition.

"We're not able to see the muzzle flashes," said Capt. Read Omohundro,
the company commander. "As a result," he said, "we end up expending a
lot of ammunition trying to get the snipers."

At one point, they thought that they had a bead on someone running
back and forth between the two buildings. Then Capt. Christopher
Spears exclaimed: "He's on a bike!"

And somehow, through a volley of gunfire, whoever it was got away.

At 5 p.m., the marines finally crossed Highway 10 and searched the
smoking remains of the two buildings. At 5:30 p.m., a sniper opened up
on them.

I asked an Iraqi friend about the battle in Fallujah and he told that
there are no more than 100 fighters there. most of them have already

left the city before the attack. I asked, what is the purpose of
keeping such a small number of fighters facing ten thousand US
marines. He said, they are there to make Fallujah a city of ghosts. I
didn't believe him, I thought he is kidding or he has no idea of what
is going on over there. After reading the article below I think he I
am the one who doesn't have any idea of what is happening there!



Hard Lesson in Battle: 150 Marines Meet 1 Sniper
By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: November 11, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/middleeast/11snipers.html?ex=1100840400&en=eef72c7182d1b71d&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1

FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 10 - American marines called in two airstrikes on
the pair of dingy three-story buildings squatting along Highway 10 on
Wednesday, dropping 500-pound bombs each time. They fired 35 or so
155-millimeter artillery shells, 10 shots from the muzzles of Abrams
tanks and perhaps 30,000 rounds from their automatic rifles. The
building was a smoking ruin.

But the sniper kept shooting.

He - or they, because no one can count the flitting shadows in this
place - kept 150 marines pinned down for the better part of a day. It
was a lesson on the nature of the enemy in this hellish warren of
rubble-strewn streets. Not all of the insurgents are holy warriors
looking for martyrdom. At least a few are highly trained killers who
do their job with cold precision and know how to survive.

"The idea is, he just sits up there and eats a sandwich," said Lt.
Andy Eckert, "and we go crazy trying to find him."

The contest is a deadly one, and two marines in Company B, First
Battalion, Eighth Regiment of the First Marine Expeditionary Force
have been killed by snipers in the past two days as the unit advanced
just half a mile southward to Highway 10 from a mosque they had taken
on Tuesday.

Despite the world-shaking blasts of weaponry as the Americans try to
root out the snipers, this is also a contest of wills in which the
tension rises to a level that seems unbearable, and then rises again.
Marine snipers sit, as motionless as blue herons, for 30 minutes and
stare with crazed intensity into the oversized scopes on their guns.
If so much as a penumbra brushes across a windowsill, they open up.

With the troops' senses tuned to a high pitch, mundane events become
extraordinary. During one bombing, a blue-and-yellow parakeet flew up
to a roof of a captured building and fluttered about in tight circles
before perching on a slumping power line, to the amazement of the
marines assembled there.

On another occasion, the snipers tensed when they heard movement in
the direction of a smoldering building. A cat sauntered out,
unconcerned with anything but making its rounds in the neighborhood.

"Can I shoot it, sir?" a sniper asked an officer.

"Absolutely not," came the reply.

This day started at about 8 a.m., when the marines left the building
where they had been sleeping and headed south toward Highway 10, which
runs from east to west and roughly bisects the town. At the corner of
Highway 10 and Thurthar, the street they were moving along, was a
headquarters building for the Iraqi National Guard that had been taken
over by insurgents.

Almost immediately, they came under fire from a sniper in the minaret
of a mosque just south of them. Someone in a three-story residential
building farther down the street also opened up. The marines made
50-yard dashes and dived for cover, but one of them was cut down,
killed on the spot. It was unclear what direction the fatal bullet had
come from.

"I don't know who it was," Lt. Steven Berch, leader of the fallen
marine's platoon, said of the attacker, "but he was very well
trained."

After two hours of bombardment, the sniper at that mosque ceased
firing. But just around the corner at the famous blue-domed Khulafah
Al Rashid mosque, another sniper was pinning down marines, and
airstrikes were called in on it, too. The issue of striking at mosques
is so sensitive in the Arab world that the American military later
issued a statement saying that the strike on the Khulafah mosque was
unavoidable and that precision munitions merely knocked down a
minaret.

By noon, the marines had worked their way down to the national guard
building, still taking fire from the sniper, or snipers, on the other
side of Main Street. Inside was a sign in Arabic that said: "Long live
the mujahedeen." Soon the marines had spray-painted another sign over
it: "Long live the muj killers."

But for the next five hours, they could not kill whoever was running
from window to window and firing at them from the other side of Main
Street, despite the expenditure of enormous amounts of ammunition.

"We're not able to see the muzzle flashes," said Capt. Read Omohundro,
the company commander. "As a result," he said, "we end up expending a
lot of ammunition trying to get the snipers."

At one point, they thought that they had a bead on someone running
back and forth between the two buildings. Then Capt. Christopher
Spears exclaimed: "He's on a bike!"

And somehow, through a volley of gunfire, whoever it was got away.

At 5 p.m., the marines finally crossed Highway 10 and searched the
smoking remains of the two buildings. At 5:30 p.m., a sniper opened up
on them.