[b]Iraq witness says 2 GIs captured by guerrillas[/b]

By Dexter Filkins
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. soldiers began an intensive search on Saturday for two of their comrades who apparently were captured by masked insurgents after an ambush in the chaotic area south of the capital.
The two Americans, who were not identified, were taken prisoner at dusk on Friday by a group of guerrillas who mounted a surprise attack on their lone Humvee near the town of Youssifiyah, according to Iraqis in the area.
The American command in Baghdad confirmed that two Americans had not been seen since Friday after a battle with insurgents who had attacked a traffic checkpoint they had set up on a canal crossing near the Euphrates River. One U.S. soldier was killed in the raid.
"We are currently using every means at our disposal on the ground, in the air and in the water to find them," said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the U.S. military spokesman.
According to local Iraqis in the area, the two American soldiers who survived the gun battle were led away by the insurgents to a pair of waiting cars.
Hassan Abdul Hadi was tending to his date and apple trees near the village of Qaraghul when he heard gunfire and explosions. When he walked to the road, he saw a Humvee.
"I was shocked to see the Humvee — nothing seemed to be wrong with it," Hadi said. "Then I heard the men shouting 'God is great!' and I saw that they had taken the Americans with them. The gunmen took them and drove away."
At the time of the attack, the American soldiers were at a traffic-control checkpoint outside of Youssifiyah, a troubled town south of Baghdad that is considered a militant stronghold. According to the Iraqis, the checkpoint was guarded by about a dozen American soldiers who had come in three Humvees.
The checkpoint came under fire from insurgents operating from orange, apple and date groves that line the road. The Americans in two of the Humvees took off in pursuit as the insurgents retreated into the groves, the Iraqis said, leaving one of the Humvees and only three or four American soldiers at the checkpoint.
The checkpoint then came under attack from another direction by a group of seven or eight guerrillas, wearing kaffiyehs over their faces and black suits, the Iraqis said.

About an hour later, a team of Americans arrived and began going door to door in the villages in search of the missing soldiers, the Iraqis said. By Saturday morning, the search had dramatically grown, with soldiers scouring the area, helicopters surveying the landscape and divers going into canals, the American military said.
"The Americans are going house to house, detaining any men they find," said Yusef Abdul Nasir, who lives in Jurf Al-Sakhar, a village next to Qaraghul. He said he had heard rumors that the soldiers were being held in Jurf Al-Sakhar.
Nasir said the Americans were threatening to hold the men they had detained unless the soldiers were turned over. There was no way to independently verify Nasir's report.
The apparent capture of the two Americans raises the specter of their public exploitation at the hands of insurgents. Other Americans, including civilian contractors, have been videotaped while they were mistreated, tortured or killed.
The last American soldier known to have been taken prisoner was Spec. Keith Maupin, who was captured by insurgents during an ambush of his convoy in April 2004 near Fallujah, west of Baghdad. The Arabic news network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape that purported to show Maupin being shot from behind. But the victim's face was not shown in the tape, and the American military has not confirmed the death.
The area around Youssifiyah, where the two soldiers disappeared, has been the scene of heavy fighting between American troops — many of them Special Operations commandos — and insurgents believed to be connected to al-Qaida in Iraq. That group's founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in an American airstrike, and the American military said that information about his network was found in safe houses in and around Youssifiyah.
In a statement released Saturday, Caldwell said that American forces had responded within minutes to the area after hearing gunfire and explosions. He said they had conducted four raids in search of the men and had also deployed remotely piloted surveillance aircraft.
The search for the Americans in Youssifiyah came on a day of widespread violence across the capital, with most of the attacks apparently carried out by insurgents. There were seven attacks in all: one suicide bombing, a mortar attack, three car bombs, a bomb placed underneath a pushcart, and a bomb placed inside of a minibus. Thirty-eight Iraqis were killed and 75 wounded, the Interior Ministry said.
The attacks broke a spell of relative calm in the capital after the beginning on Wednesday of a citywide security crackdown by American soldiers and Iraqi security forces in the aftermath of al-Zarqawi's death.
The cart-bomb exploded in the Haraj market, near the Tigris River in central Baghdad. The bomb went off in the middle of a line of pushcarts, from which impoverished Iraqis hawk mainly secondhand clothing. The explosion killed five civilians and wounded 25.
The spree of bombings and mortar attacks in Baghdad was an embarrassment for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who ordered more police and army checkpoints for the city last week to restore security for its 5 million residents.
His Sunni Arab deputy prime minister, Salam Zikam Ali al-Zubaie, charged that the plan was not properly thought out and needed more work.
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...34_iraq18.html