Quote:
The fighting came just two days after an American convoy fended off a highly organized ambush by a band of 40 to 50 insurgents on the outskirts of Baghdad. The American military said 26 attackers were killed in that battle, on Sunday in the town of Salman Pak, 12 miles southeast of the capital. It was the most ambitious assault against the American military since the Jan. 30 elections, and showed that the guerrilla war was still burning fiercely here two years after the Americans invaded Iraq and despite the high voter turnout in the elections.
The battle on Tuesday began at about 11 a.m., as members of the Interior Ministry's First Police Commando Battalion, acting on tips from residents of the area, approached the guerrilla camp by Lake Tharthar, Major Goldenberg said. Before the American invasion, the large lake was a popular tourist spot for Iraqis and was the site of a fish farming project begun by the government of Saddam Hussein. It lies in a barren, arid region 100 miles northwest of Baghdad and straddles the border between Anbar and Salahuddin Provinces, both insurgent strongholds dominated by the former governing Sunni Arabs.
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In the two highest profile incidents involving anti-coalition forces in Iraq in the past few days, US and Iraqi forces, working together and with the assistance of locals, annihilate the terrorists (many of them apparently foreigners), and this shows that the "the guerrilla war was still burning fiercely"? And while large parts of this Sunni Arab region may be a refuge or even a safe haven for the "insurgents," it certainly doesn't sound like it's much of a "stronghold."