OUGHAYMAH, Iraq — U.S. Marines advanced farther into insurgent strongholds near the border with Syria in western Iraq on Tuesday, the third day of a major assault in which the military says it has killed more than 100 fighters and discovered large weapons caches.
Eight suspects were reported slain in sporadic attacks Tuesday throughout the Ramana area, a ribbon of agricultural villages in Al Anbar province, a largely Sunni Muslim region.
Three Americans have been killed, 25 have been wounded and 110 insurgents have died in the fighting that began Sunday, the Marine Corps said. More than 1,000 troops are taking part in the offensive, which is aimed at capturing or killing rebel recruits from western Iraq and foreign fighters who cross the border here.
In New Ubaydi, one of the towns where Marines struggled for hours Monday to cross to the north side of the Euphrates River, a Cobra attack helicopter fired machine-gun blasts at several suspects speeding away in a car, killing the occupants. Pilots used a Hellfire missile against another suspect vehicle that had ducked under a gas station awning. It burned for hours after the strike.
Just before midnight Monday, two suicide car bombers ambushed a U.S. convoy attempting to salvage a tank that had been disabled by a mine in the village of Karabilah, also on the river's south side, military officials said. A tank gunner demolished one of the vehicles, but the other car exploded near a Humvee, injuring four Marines, one seriously.
The assault on this strip of well-irrigated towns is the first in months by the Marines, who have faced manpower constraints and other priorities in western Iraq, a hotbed of the Sunni-led insurgency.
The push to the north side of the Euphrates was delayed a day because Army bridge builders encountered difficulties spanning the river. Until the bridge's completion Monday, there had been no easy way for the U.S. troops to move heavy armored vehicles across the Euphrates into the Ramana area.
Military officials think that foreign fighters have been using the region as a sanctuary on their way from the porous Syrian border to cities such as Mosul, Ramadi and Baghdad, where they have carried out kidnappings, assassinations and suicide bombings aimed at destabilizing Iraq's nascent government.
Some U.S. commanders believe the area contains insurgent training camps and high-ranking members of the Iraq arm of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, including its leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi. As of early today, no camps or Al Qaeda leaders had been found.
