MARINE CORPS TIMES REPORT FOUR MARINES KILLED IN ANBAR PROVINCE, THE PROVINCE WHICH "THE SURGE" HAD SECURED

Roadside bomb kills 4 Marines in Anbar
Attack is deadliest in province in months
By Bradley Brooks - The Associated PressPosted : Sunday May 4, 2008 9:23:35 EDT

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2008/05/ap_anbar_marines_050408/

BAGHDAD — The military said Sunday a roadside bomb killed four Marines in western Anbar province, the deadliest attack in that area in months.

The Marines were killed on Friday, but no other details of the incident were released.
Anbar was once a stronghold for insurgents battling against U.S. forces.

But in the past year the vast desert province has largely been calmed with the rise of the Awakening Council movement — Sunni fighters who now turn their guns on al-Qaida instead of U.S. forces.

In Baghdad on Sunday, a bomb hit a motorcade carrying Iraq’s first lady in the Karrada district, injuring four of her body guards but leaving her unharmed, said the office of Iraq’s president.
Hiro Ibrahim Ahmed, wife of President Jalal Talabani, was headed to the city’s central National Theater to attend a cultural festival when the attack occurred just before noon, said the presidential office. It was unclear if she was the target of the bombing.

Friday’s attack in Anbar was the most lethal in the province since Sept. 6, when four Marines were killed in combat. The military did not release details of those deaths either.

On April 22, two Marines were killed in Anbar when a bomb-rigged truck explod
ed at a checkpoint in the city of Ramadi.

Fierce fighting in the city of Fallujah in April and November 2004 made the province the symbol of the Sunni resistance to the U.S. presence in Iraq, but since the rise of the Awakening movement in 2007 commanders say it has been largely quiet.

Despite the attack in Anbar, military spokesman Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll told reporters on Saturday that attacks carried out by al-Qaida declined last month after increasing earlier this year.

He said there was “no place for al-Qaida” to hide in Iraq and U.S. troops were continuing to hunt them down in Diyala province and the city of Mosul, where many are believed to have fled north from Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Iraqi health officials said at least 10 people — including two children — were killed in the past 24 hours in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, a slum of 2.5 million people and a stronghold for the Shiite Mahdi Army militia.

Officials at two hospitals in Sadr City spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have been battling militia members there for weeks as part of an Iraqi government crackdown on the fighters.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh, speaking at the same news conference as Driscoll, said the battles against the militia fighters in Sadr City would continue.

“It is the full responsibility of the Iraqi government to implement the rule of law,” al-Dabbagh said.

On Saturday, the U.S. military fired guided missiles into the heart of Sadr City, leveling a building 50 yards away from a hospital and wounding nearly two dozen people.

AP Television News footage showed several ambulances destroyed and burning, with thick black smoke rising from them as firefighters worked to put out the flames.

The strike, made from a ground launcher, took out a militant “command-control center,” the U.S. military said. Iraqi officials said at least 23 people were wounded, though none of them were patients in the hospital.

The clashes with Mahdi Army have caused deep rifts among Iraq’s Shiite majority and have pulled U.S. troops into difficult urban combat.

Militia members have been blamed for firing hundreds of rockets or mortars from Sadr City into the Green Zone, the U.S.-protected area housing the American embassy and much of the Iraqi government. In the past month, more than a dozen people — including two American civilians and soldiers — have been killed inside the zone during the attacks.