Iraq: May 4, 2003

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An American infantryman was shot and wounded while on patrol in Baghdad. This kind of sniping is thought to come mainly from non-Iraqi "Jihadis" who came to Iraq to defeat the "foreign invaders." There are also a lot of armed Baath party and Saddam supporters still running around. These gunmen are still intimidating Iraqis, and keeping them out of neighborhoods largely populated by Saddam supporters. These are the areas where American troops make raids when they get a tip about the presence of senior members of the former government.

Several hundred Iraqi police returned to street patrol in Baghdad. Actually, most of the rehired police spent most of their first day back on the job cleaning up their looted police stations. Iraqi police will not be allowed to carry weapons until they undergo a training course on the use of force against civilians. In the past, the police were known as trigger happy with civilians. 

So far, 3,176 Iraqi POWs have been released, another 3,002 were let go when it was determined that they were not in the military. About 3,200 are still being held and interrogated. In Baghdad, some 2,000 people have been arrested for criminal activity since April 10th.

The U.S., Britain and Poland are still working out the concept of occupation zones. The U.S. proposed three zones, one, in the north, to be run by Polish troops. But Poland wants four zones, with other nations running the fourth zone.

 

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