Today’s news from Iraq -
Jan 14th, a young girl phoned in a tip about a possible roadside bomb to coalition forces, after she saw a white bag in a hole on a road in southeast Baghdad.
When coalition forces investigated, they found a man hiding in the grass by the road, four masked men in a car, a man carrying an AK-47 assault rifle and two suspected triggermen in the prone position. Coalition forces prevented the terrorism suspects from carrying out an attack, and an explosive ordinance team disabled the bomb, officials said.
Hit, Iraq – Operation Hedgehog was an operation to search for weapons caches in the Hit area of Iraq. And of course you will never guess what was found. Weapons! Lots of weapons.
“This was our biggest find to date,” said 1st Lt. Antonio Agnone, the combat engineer platoon leader for BLT 1/2. “We’ve uncovered numerous, and significant caches the insurgents have hidden in Hit in places where they thought they would have easy access to them.”
Agnone and his Marines unearthed nearly 500 rockets and artillery and mortar rounds, along with approx. 100 tank rounds and substantial quantities of rocket propellant, fuzes, and blasting caps. Such supplies are the components insurgents commonly use to make improvised explosive devices (IEDs), two of which were also found. Also discovered was a stockpile of assault rifles and ammunition of various caliber.
According to Agnone, what amazed many of his Marines was the lengths the insurgents would go to hide the caches, going so far as to defile a local cemetery.
Acting on a tip, the Marines carefully searched the cemetery and found caches in grave spots adorned with both head and foot markers.
“We went over the area very carefully with mine detectors,” explained Agnone, a native of Columbus, Ohio, “and that led us to the sites. We were very careful and didn’t disturb any civilian graves in the process.”
Now remember the Iraqi’s and other Muslim complaints about the US and coalition forces attacking Mosque and other religious locations to include cemeteries. Now the Insurgents tried to use that against the Coalition by hiding their weapons caches there, but it didn’t work. They were found anyway.
Troops discovered a bomb under a pile of hay near Ramadi after receiving a tip yesterday.
A bomb squad responded to the site and found a 155 mm round, a 12-volt battery, a washing machine timer and a radio base station. A bomb team disarmed the device and recovered the contents for later analysis and disposal.
Iraqi police also found a bomb made from a bag of explosives wired to a cell phone yesterday in Tal Afar. A bomb squad was called to the site, and the bomb was moved to a safe location and destroyed.
No injuries or damage were reported in any of the incidents.
Also a terrorist bomber was killed near Tal Afar when a roadside bomb he was emplacing detonated prematurely. Soldiers from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment discovered the bomber's body and part of a shovel near a blast crater. LOL
This is the second such incident over the past three days, officials said. Two terrorists were killed Jan. 9 while emplacing a roadside bomb near Samarra. An improvised explosive device attack against coalition forces near Balad yesterday resulted in the capture of four terrorism suspects.
A coalition aircraft spotted the four men running from the area into nearby homes and guided in more ground forces, who quickly captured the suspected terrorists. No soldiers were injured during the incident, but one coalition vehicle was slightly damaged.
And on Jan 14th, Iraqi soldiers and U.S. Marines, discovered 11 weapons caches near Barwanah, Iraq, military officials at Camp Blue Diamond here reported today.
A translator on patrol with the troops spotted the initial cache, and 10 adjacent caches were discovered thereafter. The site was so large it took two days to completely uncover, officials said.
The caches contained artillery and mortar rounds of various sizes, rockets, armor-piercing incendiary rounds and 1,900 pounds of propellant. An explosive ordnance disposal team detonated 4,000 pounds of high explosives.
All in a good days work.