QAIM, Iraq — Marines concluded their offensive into insurgent strongholds in western Iraq on Saturday, saying they had pushed guerrillas out of villages and towns where they had become entrenched but acknowledging that many of the fighters had escaped.
Marine officials said Operation Matador, among the largest military deployments since last year's battle against insurgents in Fallouja, had disrupted the guerrillas' capacity to coordinate attacks elsewhere in Iraq.
They also said the assault sent a clear message that the U.S. military would brook no insurgent havens in Iraq, even in the remote badlands of Al Anbar province along the border with Syria.
But Marines expressed regret that they had not captured more insurgents and said they had no illusions that the guerrillas would not soon return.
"We got brought here to catch lots of insurgents. That's what we thought we were here for," said Maj. Kei Braun, executive officer of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, which took part in the offensive. "But as it turned out, it didn't quite work out that way."
Nine Marines were killed and 40 were injured in their weeklong westward sweep. By Marine estimates, they killed at least 125 insurgents and detained 39 suspects for questioning.
Military officials had intelligence that the Ramana region, a string of small farming towns near the Syrian border north of the Euphrates River, was being used by insurgents as a training ground, staging area and transit point for foreign fighters.
But delays on the first day of the assault, when U.S. Army bridge builders failed to span the Euphrates River and an attack on U.S. forces left three Americans dead, allowed many of the insurgents in Ramana to escape into Syria, Marine officers said.
They also expressed regret at not guarding border escape routes better.
"We didn't find as many insurgents as we wanted to," said Lt. Col. Timothy S. Mundy, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Regiment, which led the attack. "But we pushed a lot of them out of the Ramana area. I think the Marines did great. We still accomplished the purpose of getting them to run in front of us and proving that they don't have any safe havens."
Marines conducted hundreds of house-to-house searches in small riverside villages and found an unspecified number of illegal firearms and bombs, officials said. On Saturday alone, Marines found six improvised explosive devices, among them a large bomb similar to one that destroyed an armored amphibious personnel carrier Wednesday, killing five Marines and wounding 10 others.
