Baghdad: American planes rained bombs on al-Qaeda targets on Thursday as the US military pursued terrorists across Iraq a year after President George W Bush decided to send reinforcements to the country.
The planes targeted south of Baghdad hitting more than 40 al-Qaeda targets as 40,000 pounds (18,144 kilograms) of explosives were dropped in the first 10 minutes, the military said in an e-mailed statement.
Two B-1 bombers and four F-16 jet fighters were used to attack the southeastern Arab Jabour district as part of a new nationwide campaign against al-Qaeda in Iraq called Operation Phantom Phoenix, which began January 8.
The bombs were “aimed at flushing out remaining al-Qaeda extremists operating in the southern Arab Jabour area, and to create conditions for improved security,'' the military said. It however, gave no details of casualties.
Nine US soldiers have been killed since the start of the campaign. Six died on Wednesday in a house booby-trapped with a bomb in the northeastern Diyala province and three others were shot dead northwest of Baghdad the previous day.
Before the latest casualties, some 3,912 US personnel had died in Iraq, of whom 3,183 were killed in action.
More than 28,800 were wounded, 12,918 of them so seriously they couldn't return to duty.
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