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U.S.-Led Assault in N. Iraq Town Meets Little Insurgent Resistance
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"Why should I be between you and the bullets?" he asked the soldiers. "When we see you coming, we stay inside. We don't want to expose ourselves to the danger."
In other parts of the country, at least 17 Iraqi soldiers and four civilians were killed in insurgent attacks. Much of the violence was concentrated in the northern province of Diyala, where gunmen attacked two checkpoints manned by Iraqi police and soldiers. A total of 13 soldiers were killed, hospital officials said.
Four Iraqi soldiers were killed in an ambush 60 miles south of the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.
Four civilians were killed in the northern city of Samarra when mortar rounds fired at a U.S. military installation hit a residential neighborhood, the Associated Press reported.
Near Kirkuk, armed men set fire to oil leaking from a major pipeline, according to Mahmood Abdullah, a member of the government's pipeline protection force. The pipeline, which carries crude oil from Kirkuk to the Turkish city of Ceyhan, eventually caught fire.
The Reuters news service reported that a bomb, rather than arson, caused the pipeline fire and that the blaze shut down exports to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.
The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline is capable of exporting roughly 1.5 million barrels per day, although output has averaged around 200,000 barrels per day since the U.S.-led invasion began, because of attacks and sabotage.
Special correspondent Hassan Shammari in Baqubah contributed to this report.
