U.S.: Helicopters fire on fleeing al-Qaida

Odierno, who was in charge of Baqouba as head of the 4th Infantry Division in 2003 and 2004, said he was shocked at how entrenched al-Qaida had become.

“This is not the Baqouba I knew, and we can’t let this happen again,” he said. Militant activity spiked in Baqouba in the summer of 2006, Odierno said. A U.S. airstrike killed al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi near Baqouba in June 2006, but by then the city was already a major base for his terror network.

Since last fall, the U.S. has kept a single brigade — 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division — in charge of all of Diyala province. It was enough to conduct sporadic attacks on al-Qaida, but not enough to hold the entire province, Odierno said.

He encouraged battalion commanders to come up with a plan to prevent al-Qaida’s return, after the major fighting is over. “It’s down the road, but it’s what you should be thinking about right now,” warning “the heavy fighting still might be ahead of you.”

'Like jelly in a sandwich'
By the time American units moved in to block the militants’ escape, many were already gone, Odierno said.

“It’s like jelly in a sandwich — it squirts when you squeeze it,” Parke said. “We’re fooling ourselves if we think we can hold them in.”

U.S. officials accuse al-Qaida of using car bombings and other violence to try to tip Iraq into full-scale sectarian civil war. A suicide truck bomb blamed on al-Qaida killed 87 people outside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad on Tuesday.

Bednarek said the major difference with this week's campaign around Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province, was a new Iraqi commitment to the effort.

“It’s different than Fallujah in the fall of ’04, because of the Iraqi commitment here. They’re side by side with us, and locals have finally realized here that al-Qaida has no future here,” Bednarek said.

The U.S. military has sought to seize the momentum against al-Qaida and other militants with the arrival in Iraq of some 30,000 additional troops. It has launched several large-scale operations.

But it has also faced a series of recent attacks on U.S. forces who are more vulnerable as they increasingly take to the streets and remote outposts, and the bombs appear to be growing more powerful. Some U.S. soldiers have reported a recent increase in the use of rocket-propelled grenades.

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