Iraqi Soldiers

DALLAS -- Bewildered and anxious, Mohemmed and Hussein find it difficult to comprehend that they and thousands of their fellow former Iraqi soldiers are at the center of a budding controversy.Just a few months ago, they sat in refugee camps, waiting for a chance to escape the threat of death. And they thought they had found it in places like Dallas. But last week, mounting criticism about their presence in this country shattered their peace."There is fear now among our people," said the 26-year-old Hussein, who, like Mohemmed, 25, would allow only part of his name to be used.

The Saudi lieutenant shouted an order in Arabic. Two dozen of his men, frenzied and hollering, lowered their weapons and backed away from an encircled knot of prisoners. Kneeling at the center of this commotion in the Kuwaiti desert were 10 unarmed Iraqi soldiers with their hands on their heads. Some were in tears. Some were praying. Some were pleading for mercy. "Who brought these prisoners?" the lieutenant asked. One of his men turned and pointed at us - freelancer Michael Kelly and me - a scruffy pair of scribblers armed only with notebooks, granola bars and a beat-up Nissan Safari.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Gunfire, explosions and kidnappings picked up a withering pace across Iraq yesterday, killing at least 60 people, including many police officers and Iraqi soldiers. Government forces and U.S. troops raced through flames and smoke from one set of casualties to the next. The violence that shook Baghdad and towns to the north appeared to intensify anger against U.S. soldiers and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for not stemming months of unrelenting bloodshed that has led to thousands deaths and widening sectarian tensions.

BAGHDAD - Three Iraqi soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing yesterday in Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk, where relations remained frayed among Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen after a suicide bombing and ethnic clashes earlier in the week. The bomb targeted a convoy of Iraqi army vehicles, killing three soldiers and wounding two others, the military said. Iraq's government warned local factions that it would not allow any party to decide unilaterally the region's future, in reaction to a threat by Kurdish provincial council members to declare Kirkuk a part of Iraqi Kurdistan.

BAGHDAD - Three Iraqi soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing yesterday in Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk, where relations remained frayed among Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen after a suicide bombing and ethnic clashes earlier in the week. The bomb targeted a convoy of Iraqi army vehicles, killing three soldiers and wounding two others, the military said. Iraq's government warned local factions that it would not allow any party to decide unilaterally the region's future, in reaction to a threat by Kurdish provincial council members to declare Kirkuk a part of Iraqi Kurdistan.

WASHINGTON -- When Col. Trevor Dupuy was fighting the Japanese in North Burma in the summer of 1944, he learned an important lesson about estimating the casualties of a dug-in enemy. Allied troops were besieging the town of Myitkyina and ** figured they'd killed or wounded at least 3,000 of the defenders. They weren't even close."It took until 10 years after the war was over to find out that there had been no more than 800 Japanese in the town at any one time," said Mr. Dupuy, a military historian considered the foremost expert on estimating and predicting battle losses.

FORT RILEY, Kan. -- The U.S. Army division that broke through Saddam Hussein's defensive front line used plows mounted on tanks and combat earthmovers to bury thousands of Iraqi soldiers -- some still alive and firing their weapons -- in more than 70 miles of trenches, according to U.S. Army officials.In the first two days of ground fighting in Operation Desert Storm, three brigades of the 1st Mechanized Infantry Division, "The Big Red One," used the grisly innovation to destroy trenches and bunkers being defended by more than 8,000 Iraqi soldiers, according to division estimates.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Mobs of former Iraqi soldiers rioted in two cities, demanding jobs and pay yesterday, while U.S. troops welcomed the first batch of newly trained recruits into the country's fledgling reconstructed army. In Baghdad, dozens of rock-throwing former soldiers waiting for monthly stipends stormed a U.S. military base near the neighborhood of Mansour, clashing with U.S. troops and Iraqi police. At least one Iraqi was killed and 25 were injured, doctors and witnesses said. U.S. soldiers fired warning shots and engaged in a firefight with armed Iraqi protesters, witnesses said.

BANI MAQAN, Iraq - The first crack in Saddam Hussein's formidable northern defense line appeared here yesterday at this Iraqi checkpoint on the main highway into Kirkuk, a city rich in oil and strained by ethnic tensions. This post, formerly bristling with soldiers and Iraqi border guards who exacted bribes from travelers passing through the demilitarized zone, was unexpectedly abandoned yesterday afternoon by Iraqi soldiers. The soldiers had defended it since 1991. They left quietly, loading onto trucks and slipping quickly away.

FALLUJAH, Iraq - The battle for Fallujah, the most significant offen sive in Iraq since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein 20 months ago, began in earnest yesterday with thousands of U.S. troops entering parts of the city believed to be held by insurgents. The operation began Sunday with bombing by U.S. jets, while artillery and heavy gunfire thundered across the city as American troops seized two bridges, a hospital and other ob jectives in the first stage of a long-ex pected invasion aimed at the center of the Iraqi insurgency.

BAGHDAD -- For more than two months, British journalist Richard Butler sat with a hood over his head wondering what his kidnappers in Basra were planning. Yesterday, gunshots rang through the house where he was held. There were shouts. The door to his room burst open, and Butler tore off his hood to see Iraqi army soldiers. They were as surprised to see Butler as he was to see them, according to Iraqi military officials, who described yesterday's rescue of the freelancer, under contract with CBS News, as a lucky find during a search of a house for illegal weapons.

BAGHDAD -- Moments after jubilant Iraqi troops were captured on videotape yesterday shouting, "Where is terrorism now?" a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest, killing at least three soldiers celebrating Army Day. It was the first of three deadly attacks in Baghdad during the day, all within about an hour. The bombings killed at least eight people and injured dozens, although some estimates put the death toll as high as 15. Despite an overall decline in violence in recent months, several high-profile bombings recently have rocked the city.

BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi soldier suspected of having ties to Sunni insurgents opened fire on U.S. troops during a joint operation, killing two soldiers and wounding three others, military officials said yesterday. The incident on Dec. 26 is one of the few reported instances of an Iraqi soldier's turning on U.S. forces since the invasion in March 2003. The Iraqi soldier killed Sgt. Benjamin Portell, 27, of Bakersfield, Calif., and Capt. Rowdy Inman, 38, of Houston "for reasons that are yet unknown," the U.S. military said.

Maryland Guard in IraqMOSUL, Iraq -- The security alarm at the American base blared at 6:20 a.m., but the woman's message sounded as calm as an airport terminal announcement: "Incoming, incoming, incoming." Seconds later, a mortar shell landed with a deep thud, producing a hazy cloud of black smoke on the horizon over a military airfield and sending Maryland National Guard soldiers at the pedestrian entrance to the military compound to their battle stations. The attack at this coalition base in northern Iraq produced no casualties among the Towson-based Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 175th Infantry Regiment.

BAGHDAD -- A top U.S. military commander in Iraq called for more Iraqi troops to police troubled areas yesterday, a day in which at least 26 people were killed in attacks on civilians and police across the troubled nation. Major Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said the Iraqi troop shortage was forcing him and other commanders to recruit residents to police their own neighborhoods. "We need to add confident, capable Iraqi forces to maintain security," he said.

WORLD Pope shares Mideast misgivings As Italians converge on Rome to protest the war in Iraq, President Bush received a more subtle but pointed message yesterday about America's Mideast policy in his first meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict urged the president to pursue a "regional and negotiated" solution to the violent crises engulfing the Middle East, and voiced alarm about "the worrying situation in Iraq." pg 23a 10 Iraqi soldiers killed A suicide bomber killed 10 Iraqi soldiers and wounded 30 others yesterday when he drove a truck packed with explosives into an army headquarters in a town south of Baghdad, the unit's commander said.

NUMANIYAH, Iraq - In the shade of a grove of palm trees along the banks of the Tigris River, Lt. Casey Brock stood yesterday over a pile of Iraqi rocket-propelled grenades and pondered their destructive power. "You are looking at 20 dead Marines for each one of these," said Brock of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, pulling open box after box of the slender cone-shaped rockets capable of piercing through the Marines' armored amphibious assault vehicles. Nearby lay hundreds of abandoned mortars, an anti-aircraft gun, three tanks, stashes of AK-47s and other ammunition stores.

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. military announced yesterday the deaths of 11 U.S. troops and an embedded journalist, and Iraqi officials said scores of civilians were killed across the country. A top U.S. military commander warned that more casualties are likely over the next three months as more American soldiers arrive in Baghdad under President Bush's troop increase, because "we're taking the fight to the enemy." Six of the American soldiers and a journalist working for a Russian publication were killed yesterday in Diyala when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In the battle for Baghdad, Haifa Street has changed hands so often that it has taken on the feel of a no man's land, the deadly space between opposing trenches. As American and Iraqi troops poured in yesterday, the street showed why it is such a sensitive gauge of an urban conflict marked by front lines that melt into confusion, enemies with no clear identity and allies who disappear or do not show up at all. In a miniature version of the troop increase that the United States hopes will secure the city, American soldiers and armored vehicles raced onto Haifa Street before dawn to dislodge Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias that have been battling for a stretch of ragged slums and mostly abandoned high-rises.