Iraqi Insurgents Unleash Deadly Bombings Despite U.S. Offensive - from TBO.com

Iraqi Insurgents Unleash Deadly Bombings Despite U.S. Offensive - from TBO.com: "May 12, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A car bomb exploded in a jammed commercial district Thursday, devastating the area and turning the sky gray as shops and restaurants caught fire in the most deadly of a string of attacks that killed 21 and included the assassinations of a general and a colonel on their way to work.

Iraqis expressed growing fury at the relentless bloodshed, throwing stones at police and U.S. forces who came to the scene of the bombing. More than 90 were also wounded in Thursday's violence.

The attacks came as U.S. troops were in the midst of a major offensive near the Syrian border, 200 miles northwest of Baghdad. Fierce clashes were reported with insurgents on the outskirts of the town of Qaim, where angry residents lashed out at U.S. forces.

'They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We have nothing left,' one man in Qaim told Associated Press Television News. He did not give his name and hid his face with a scarf to address the camera.

Families were fleeing in trucks packed with luggage and APTN footage showed plumes of smoke rising from the town. The U.S. has pounded the area with air strikes, artillery barrages and gunfire in the first days of the offensive aimed at rooting out followers of Iraq's most wanted militant leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
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At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated Thursday that the insurgency could last for many more years.

'This requires patience,' he said at a news conference. 'This is a thinking and adapting adversary ... I wouldn't look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from three, four years to nine years.'"