Wednesday, July 23, 2003 General Sanchez Press Briefing, June 23, 2003
The entire briefing is here. I'm going to highlite a few key items, with my commentary.In the area of political governing structures, we have re- established, at the neighborhood, city, province, national levels, governing bodies. In the major towns of Iraq, 28 of 31 councils have been established. In the security arena, nearly 24,000 Iraqi police are back on the job.
More than 8,700 facilities' protective services guards have been hired, and they're on the streets protecting the critical facilities of Iraq. More than 800 guards are on the job protecting the borders and beginning to take control of Iraq's borders with its neighbors.
More than 11,000 have expressed interest in enlisting for the new Iraqi army, with the first battalion of the new Iraqi army that will be civilian-controlled starting to train within 10 days. Looks like we have a lot of backup in place with more coming.
The 101st Airborne Division had anti-tank platoons and weapon squads in place. They had established a cordon to ensure that we had isolated the area, and we commenced the operation with an interpreter using a bull horn in order to attempt to urge the targets, which we were confident were in there -- we knew some folks were in there -- in what we call cordon-and-knock operation.
What we have gone to is this cordon-and-knock versus cordon-and- search. What we will do is we will cordon an area, go up to the door, knock on the door, and ask to see if personnel that we are after are located in that specific house.
In this case, we used the bullhorn, and we did not get a response, and 10 minutes later, at 1010 hours, we began to enter the building. Standard police procedure.
Immediately upon entering the building, shots were fired. We immediately determined that the targeted individuals were barricaded in the fortified portion of the building, which was the second floor, and they started engaging with small arms. We believe they were AK- 47s.
On the initial exchange of gunfire, we had three coalition soldiers wounded on the stairs as we attempted to get up to the second floor, and we had one coalition soldier that was wounded outside of the building. At this point, our forces withdrew. OK, same as the police, withdraw and call for reinforcements.
We received sporadic gunfire for a while, and at 1045 hours, we began the prep with significant Mark 19 grenade launchers . We fired a couple of AT-4 rockets at the house and also used humvee-mounted 50- caliber machine-gun fire to attempt to neutralize the threat...At 1155, the Kiowas completed their preparatory fires. At this point, the commander decided that he would make a second attempt to get inside of the house.
At 1200 hours, we attempted to reenter the house. Once again we received fire from the second floor as we attempted to move, after we had secured the first floor, to move up to the reinforced part of the building. Once again we opted to withdraw. Still attempting a capture. Else we could have pounded the house to dust. And still being shot at.
At 1300 hours, we continued the preparation using our 50-caliber machine guns, using our Mark-19s, and at this point we began to employ humvee-mounted TOW missiles. We fired 10 TOW missiles into the house. During this period, we considered employing our Apache helicopters and A-10s to come in and finish the preparation and the neutralization of the target; however, the decision was made not to employ the air power because of the high risk of collateral damage, given the neighborhood density that we were faced with.
At the end of this preparation, we believe that it is likely that the TOW missile attack was what wound up killing three of the adults.
Twenty-one minutes later, at 1321 hours, we entered the building for the third time. At this point, we received no fire as we moved up the stairs. As we got up to the second floor, the assaulting elements continued to receive fire, and they killed the remaining individual that was in the second floor. Again, selective use of assets. Good job!
There were a lot of civilians on the ground, but no one was hurt. We know of no collateral damage that occurred as a result of the operation. We were -- as I stated, we made decisions on the ground that prevented the employment of combat power that would create collateral damage. So there was no collateral damage that we are aware of at this point. Just what I like to see.
-- posted by Chuck at Wednesday, July 23, 2003 | E-mail | Permalink | Main |
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