War News for Saturday, December 08, 2007

The coalition of the willing:

From the Washington Post:
List of 'Willing' U.S. Allies Shrinks Steadily in Iraq
By Joshua Partlow


Bush once called it the "coalition of the willing," the countries willing to fight alongside the United States in Iraq. The list topped off in mid-2004 at 32 countries; troop strength peaked in November that year at 25,595. The force has since shrunk to 26 countries and 11,755 troops, or about 7 percent of the 175,000-strong multinational force, according to mid-November figures provided by the U.S. Military.

From 2003 to early 2007, the United States spent $1.5 billion to support the Iraq contingents of 20 countries, the Government Accountability Office reported this year, with about two-thirds of the money devoted to Polish forces.

Sixteen nations in the coalition, more than half the total, have 100 or fewer troops in Iraq -- five have fewer than 10 people.

Great Britain:
The largest U.S. ally here, Britain, announced in October that it will withdraw half its remaining troops, leaving about 2,500 by spring.

Kazakhstan:
The commander of the Kazakh soldiers in Iraq, all 29 of them. They were ordered by their government not to leave the base after one of those bombs, nearly three years ago, killed the first and only Kazakh soldier to die in Iraq

South Korea's 933 troops, who run a hospital and vocational technology programs in the Kurdish north and arrange for Iraqi university students to visit Korea,

Latvia has three soldiers deployed in Iraq, Slovakia two, Singapore one.

One platoon each from Macedonia and Estonia patrol the streets of Baghdad buried within American battalions

a few dozen Tongan marines guard the U.S. military headquarters at Camp Victory.

The most nationally diverse military bases, such as Delta and Echo, are in southern Iraq. Delta houses troops from Romania, Georgia, El Salvador and Poland. They do not take part in combat operations but man checkpoints, organize reconstruction projects, repair helicopters and distribute food.

The Romanian contingent at Delta, part of a force of nearly 500 Romanian troops in Iraq, works inside a narrow trailer papered with aerial maps, tracking the movements of its last functional surveillance drone -- two have crashed, one is missing parts

Across the base, the commander of El Salvador's 280 troops in Iraq, Col. Jos¿ Atilio Ben¿tez, oversees a mission that frequently sends men off the base

But one country is increasing its responsibility. Georgia, a former Soviet republic that wants to join NATO, has sent about a quarter of its army, nearly 2,000 soldiers, to Iraq. The Georgians operate six checkpoints in Wasit, searching vehicles for explosives that they believe are being smuggled from Iran.





Security incidents:



Baghdad:
#1: Around 11 a.m., a roadside bomb targeted a police commandos patrol in Kindi street at Harthiyah neighborhood (downtown Baghdad) injuring one policeman and one civilian.

#2: Around 1 p.m., a roadside bomb was exploded under control of the American army in Alawi bus station .No casualties or damages recorded


Al-Nuamaniyah:
#1: A local leader of radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement, his wife and two children were killed in a rocket attack south of Baghdad on Saturday, a police officer and a medic told AFP. Uday Hamid Ali from Sadr's office in the town of Al-Nuamaniyah, 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Baghdad in Wasit province, was killed when the rocket hit his house, police officer Ali Fadhel said.


Mahmudiya:
#1: A child was killed and two others wounded by two mortar bombs in the town of Mahmudiya, 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.


Sawayra:
#1: Two bodies with gunshot wounds and showing signs of torture were recovered from the Tigris River in the town of Suwayra, 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.


Salaheddin Prv:
#1: Iraqi police raided a village near the hometown of Saddam Hussein in the hunt for his deputy Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the most wanted former regime official still on the run, an official said on Saturday. Abdullah Hussein Jbara, deputy governor of Salaheddin province of which Tikrit is the capital, said that forces raided the village of Al-Sada al-Nuaim on Friday after a tip that Duri was holed up there. "The force did not find Duri but did find documents confirming his link with armed groups in northern provinces," Jbara said.


Baiji:
#1: A suicide truck bomber attacked a police station in one of Iraq's major oil hubs on Saturday, killing at least seven people and injuring 13 in a neighborhood home to many refinery workers and engineers, police said. The incident in Beiji was at least the third deadly suicide attack in 24 hours in Iraq and came a day after a key oil pipeline in the northern city was struck by an insurgent bomb. The bomber on Saturday approached the police station in an explosives-laden truck about three miles north of the city center, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details of the attack. The official said five policemen and two civilians were killed in the blast, which damaged nearby homes and sent shards of glass flying through the air.


Rashad:
#1: A group of armed men clad in Iraqi army uniform killed a civilian south of Kirkuk on Saturday, an official police source in Kirkuk said. "The gunmen raided the house of a civilian in the village of Karhat Qazan, al-Rashad district, south of Kirkuk, and shot the man down," the source, who preferred not to be named, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq


Hawija:
#1: Meanwhile, the same source added, an improvised explosive device went off near a civilian vehicle in the village of al-Siha on the Kirkuk-Huweija road, (70 km) southwestern Kirkuk, but caused no casualties.


Al Anbar Prv:
Ratba:
#1: One individual was killed and another wounded in an explosive charge attack that took place in central al-Rutba city on Saturday morning, eyewitnesses said. An improvised explosive device detonated on Saturday morning in al-Rutba's central al-Intisar neighborhood, killing a boy and injuring another," an eyewitness, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) by phone.



Afghanistan:
#1: U.S.-led coalition airstrikes killed several suspected Taliban in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said Saturday

#2: A NATO soldier, two children and 12 ‘terrorists’ have been killed in the first day of an operation to retake the southern Afghan town of Musa Qala, the Afghan defence ministry said Saturday. ‘And one ISAF soldier was killed as a result of a mine explosion,’ it said. An ISAF official confirmed the fatality but said the nationality of the soldier could not yet be released.