Daily Telegraph: Saddam Loyalists Turn Iraqi
City Into No-Go Area
The attack was as brazen as it was meticulously-planned. Under the gaze of an old Iraqi general wearing a Saddam Hussein-era olive-green uniform, a disciplined force of former soldiers unleashed a 90-minute mortar barrage on a United States base on the edge of Samarra.
The onslaught, witnessed last week by The Sunday Telegraph, claimed the lives of five American troops and six Iraqis in the most daring raid yet launched by Saddam loyalists in the shrine city 60 miles north of Baghdad.
For almost a fortnight, Samarra - like Fallujah - has been an outlaw town and a no-go area for the American-led Multi-National Force.
Last Thursday, the insurgents, Sunni loyalists turfed from power along with Saddam, demonstrated a new capability to kill Americans in a sophisticated military operation rather than a hit-and-run ambush.
The synchronised attack began when a car bomb devastated the headquarters of the local Iraqi National Guard. In the chaotic aftermath, several guards rushed to the still intact locker room, throwing off their uniforms in the hope that they could flee without being noticed.
A five-minute drive away, the former general was overseeing the next phase of the operation as his men set up mortar positions at a crossroads in the al-Sina'ai district.
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