US raid gets (mixed) results

"This raid has been planned for a while," Colonel Schafer said in Kirkuk, 30 miles east of here. "We came with a list of names of people who have attacked coalition forces."

The US military said it detained 34 people and confiscated 70 small arms and six rocket-propelled grenade launchers in the raid. Soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division, manning machine guns atop mud-splattered humvees, stood guard outside the municipality building Wednesday, while officers met with councilors to discuss the previous day's events.

"A few things were broken during the operation and we're here to sort it out," says Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Maurer, from Curtis, Wisc. He says there had been an increase in indirect attacks by the insurgents, mainly improvised explosive devices and long-range shelling by mortars and rockets.

"The farmers are getting mad at us because we keep blowing up their fields when we return fire," Sergeant Maurer says.

Nonetheless, he adds, the local residents are warming to the Americans. "We are getting more and more people on our side now. I think we are winning the hearts and minds of the people," he says.

It was a telling example of the disconnect between ordinary American soldiers and the local Iraqis that Maurer was speaking just two yards from a group of residents who had spent the previous five minutes expressing their hatred for the occupation forces and support for the insurgents.

"We don't want the Americans here," says Ahmad Jafaar. "Any true Iraqi who loves his country will support the resistance."

Even the police here say they were unhappy with the manner in which the raid was conducted, not least because nobody gave them prior warning.

"I arrived at a checkpoint outside Hawijah in the morning and was told I could not come through," says Colonel Jabouri. "I told them that I am the chief of police and I have to enter. They said I couldn't and that I could take a holiday instead." He adds that some of his own policemen were among the dozens of people arrested.

"Everyone is angry. It's the first time in this town's history that we have been subject to such a raid," he says.

On the outskirts of the town, in a bleak neighborhood of simple one-story houses and potholed roads fill with rain water, Ahmad Rawi, 19, stands atop a pile of rubble that 24 hours earlier had been part of his home.

He says US soldiers, accompanied by Kurdish members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, had discovered some explosives and an AK-47 rifle hidden in a yard next to his home.

"They told us all to come outside and then they went in and searched the house," he says. "They attacked the fridge with a knife and upset all the furniture. They hit us if we went close to them."

Adil Rawi, Ahmad's 30-something brother, was arrested and taken away. A stone outbuilding used as a storeroom and a shelter for the family's cattle and chickens was bulldozed. "Support for the resistance has gone up after what the Americans have done here," says Besha, Ahmad's mother.

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