IRAQ - Raids Near Syria & US Refocuses Strategy.

Salafi insurgents of Jordanian militant Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi's Qaeda, who control parts of the western Iraqi desert and include well trained Syrian volunteers, have fallen back to regroup as US Marines prepared an assault on a force of more than 200 hiding or roaming towns in remote areas just east of the Syrian border. After a two-day battle which killed more than 100 of Zarqawi's men on May 8-9 and which drew US troops into their heaviest fighting in six months, The New York Times on May 11 quoted Col. Bob Chase, chief of operations for the 2nd Marine Division, as saying: "The enemy, as you expect, once you hit them hard they have a tendency to go to ground. There are some locations that we are waiting for the timing to be correct". By then US forces in Iraq had refocused their strategy with emphasis on the porous Syrian border.

More than 71 people were killed in five suicide attacks across Iraq on May 11 in a dramatic rise in insurgent violence. Over 500 Iraqis and insurgents were killed between May 1-14, overshadowing the coming to power of Iraq's elected government.

Suicide attacks have shattered the sense of optimism created by the Jan. 30 elections and appear designed to undermine the Ja'fari leadership. This will struggle to garner genuine credibility as long as it is dependent on the US for security.

The province of Anbar has been used as a staging area for Salafi fighters crossing the Syrian border. On May 12 the Financial Times quoted US officials as saying: "It is here that these foreign fighters receive the weapons and equipment to conduct attacks such as suicide car bombs and assassination or kidnapping of political or civilian targets, in the more populated key cities of Baghdad, Ramadi, Falluja and Mosul". In Baghdad, checkpoints and road closures have created widespread traffic jams, though residents skip work and stay at home to avoid being caught up in the attacks.

The governor of Anbar, which sprawls west from Falluja to Qa'im and Ubaydi in the Jazira Desert where the Marines are fighting, was kidnapped on May 10 by Zarqawi gunmen who told his family he would only be released if US forces pulled out of Qa'im. His capture was to ease pressure on Al-Qaeda and serve a propaganda coup for Zarqawi.

Over 1,000 US troops operating under a Marine regimental combat team supported by helicopter gunships and fighter jets swept into insurgent-controlled areas along the river near Syria to root out Zarqawi's fighters and Saddam Baathists. The Marines on May 10 said they paused to gather intelligence for new attacks, having lost three of them in battle. Reporters embedded with Marine units said the US troops had encountered unexpectedly strong resistance, with fierce house-to-house fighting against sandbag-fortified insurgent positions. Insurgents used "baited attacks", de-tonating bombs and then shelling and shooting at US troops who rushed forward to the blast sites. One insurgent hiding in a basement killed a Marine by firing up through a floor grate at troops entering the house.

The Marines crossed the Euphrates around Ubaydi, a town 300 km north-west of Baghdad, and pushed west to the Syrian border, fighting insurgents holed up in safe houses in Sunni towns along the river. Many insurgents had pulled back to towns on the northern side of the river closer to Syria. Over 25 insurgents had been captured by May 14.

On May 8, US military officials said soldiers had captured the planner of the Abu Ghraib attack and another wave of bombings on April 29 which killed 40 Iraqis. The man was identified as Ammar Adnan Muhammad Hamzah Al-Zubaydi (Abul Abbas), a top aide to Zarqawi. US officials claim progress against the insurgents, killing or capturing at least 20 of Zarqawi's top lieutenants, driving militants into rural areas less patrolled by the US and getting more tips from Iraqis on the location of guerrillas. Foreign fighters, only a small part of the insurgency, still commit most of the daily suicide bombings, US military officials say. They also say young jihadists from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Iran continue to infiltrate Iraq's porous borders with Syria despite newly formed Iraqi border patrol units, and teams of specialists sent from the US Department of Homeland Security to assist them.

Earl E. Sheck, the US Defence Intelligence Agency's director of analysis and production, was recently quoted as saying at a hearing in Congress: "Fighters, arms and other supplies continue to enter Iraq from virtually all of its neighbours despite increased border security". But some intelligence analysts have since said they believed Iraqi Sunni extremists were now joining the ranks of suicide bombers in what would be a troubling new trend. Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the operations director for the US military's Joint Staff, questioned whether remote detonation of suicide bombs could mean that the drivers were "being forced into that condition by virtue of the fact that someone has got their family, you know, 20 miles away?" A senior US military officer in Iraq was then quoted as saying it was more likely that plotters remotely detonated the explosives when their chosen driver balked at the last minute.

US military officials had been concerned for weeks about intelligence reports that insurgents had stocked bomb-rigged cars to be used when the new government was formed. Iraqi police commandos seized about 20 vehicles rigged with explosives in two weeks to May 14. US soldiers and Marines earlier this month destroyed an underground cache near Al-Amiriyah in western Iraq which contained more than 800 rocket-propelled grenade rounds, 100,000 rounds of machine gun ammunition, and several thousand pounds of explosives. Top US commanders said they expected spikes and lulls in the violence through at least early 2006. The NYT quoted Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, the top Marine commander in Iraq, as saying: "It takes everything they've got to muster attacks. Unless the insurgents get involved in the political process, I think we'll continue to see this".