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Odierno: 80% of al-Qaida leaders fled Baqubah

BAQUBAH, Iraq — More than three-quarters of the senior al-Qaida leaders holed up in Baqubah escaped as American soldiers launched an offensive earlier this week, the U.S. ground forces commander said on Thursday.

During a one day trip to the battlefield where about 10,000 U.S. troops are fighting to oust suspected al-Qaida militants, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said: “We believe 80 percent of the upper level [al-Qaida] leaders fled, but we’ll find them.”

Baqubah, the capital of volatile and extremely dangerous Diyala province, sits less than an hour’s drive northeast of Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi forces are fighting to take back the province — part of a quartet of offensives targeting militants in districts flanking the capital.

“Eighty percent of the lower level leaders are still here,” said Odierno in a conversation with two reporters. He had been in the battle zone to meet battalion commanders in a bombed-out hospital in downtown Baqubah.

Soldiers spread maps across rubble and pulled up charred concrete blocks as stools inside the crumbling building. Controlled explosions of roadside bombs boomed in the distance. Soldiers laden down by body armor mopped sweat from their faces.

U.S. commanders here acknowledged Thursday that while some element of surprise was preserved in this week’s offensive, al-Qaida’s sophisticated intelligence gathering meant top militant leaders knew an attack was imminent.

“They knew ... but they didn’t know exactly when,” said Maj. Robbie Parke, spokesman for the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, which is doing most of the fighting in western Baqubah.

Days before the offensive, unmanned U.S. drones recorded video of insurgents digging trenches with back-hoes, said Parke, 36, from Rapid City, South Dakota. About 30 improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, were planted on Route Coyote, the U.S. code name for a main Baqubah thoroughfare, he said. “So they knew we were coming.”

Odierno, who was in charge of Baqubah as head of the 4th Infantry Division in 2003 and 2004, said he was shocked to see how entrenched al-Qaida had become.

“This is not the Baqubah I knew, and we can’t let this happen again,” he said. Militant activity spiked in Baqubah in the summer of 2006, Odierno said. A U.S. airstrike killed al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the provincial capital in June that year, but not before he could turn the city into a major base for his terror network’s operations.

Since autumn 2006, the U.S. military kept a single brigade — 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division — in charge of all of Diyala province. It was enough to conduct sporadic attacks on al-Qaida, but not sufficiently strong to hold the entire province, Odierno said.

He encouraged battalion commanders to come up with a plan to prevent al-Qaida’s return, after the major fighting is over. “It’s down the road, but it’s what you should be thinking about right now,” warning “the heavy fighting still might be ahead of you.”

U.S. commanders have so far concentrated their attacks on Baqubah’s west side, where as many as 1,000 al-Qaida and allied fighters were believed to be entrenched, Parke said.

Since Monday, two U.S. Army battalions have launched air assaults to the south and west of the area, a tangle of narrow dirt and paved roads crisscrossing a residential area. Troops discovered at least seven homes booby-trapped with trip wires, said Col. Steve Townsend, commander of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

Two more units moved in to flank the north and east to block the militants’ escape. But by then, Odierno said, many were already gone.

“It’s like jelly in a sandwich — it squirts when you squeeze it,” Parke said. “We’re fooling ourselves if we think we can hold them in.”

Four days into the offensive, about 15 percent of western Baqubah has been cleared, and a vehicle ban is in place, Parke said. The entire operation was expected to last 30 to 60 days, he added.

Among the facilities militant leaders left behind in Baqubah: an al-Qaida hospital, where U.S. troops discovered recently used oxygen tanks, heart defibrillators and other sophisticated medical equipment, Townsend said.