"These are operations of the 'search and destroy' type," Gere

Additional Reporting By Subhy Haddad, IOL Correspondent

BAGHDAD, November 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - As the U.S. forces pursued for the third consecutive day their get-tough tactics against Iraqi resistance fighters, a French politician described on Tuesday, November 18, the U.S. army as "brutal", saying that such more aggressive operations would do little to end mounting anti-U.S. attacks.  

"These are just the type of operations which encourage people to think they are dealing with a brutal army of occupation," Francois Gere, director of France's Institute for Diplomacy and Defense, told the BBC News Online.

"These are operations of the 'search and destroy' type which are very spectacular and designed primarily to occupy television airtime for the U.S. public back home.

"This is like using sledgehammers to swat flies. This is not how you fight guerrillas," he added. 

Gere's statements came as Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov further criticized the "excessive" tendency of the United States to use military force, saying that the level of violence in Iraq showed Moscow was right to oppose the U.S.-led invasion.

In recent days, U.S. commanders have taken off the gloves in their battle with Iraqi fighters, resorting to air strikes, heavy artillery against alleged resistance positions and satellite-guided missiles in their newest offensive Operation Ivy Cyclone II.  

The harsher U.S. tactics came a day after 17 U.S. soldiers were killed and five others wounded in a collision between two Black Hawk helicopters.

American warplanes and ground forces have bombarded targets in central Iraq and three towns north of the capital - Tikrit, Baquba and Samarra.

Locals told IslamOnline.net that the U.S. forces launched an extensive air, tank and artillery raid on areas in Baaquba, northeast of Baghdad.

The raids destroyed at least 5 houses and caused an unspecified number of casualties among its citizens, according to an eyewitness.

The U.S. forces used 155 mm heavy artillery in shelling a number of districts in the town and shelled other areas with 500-pound bombs.

"The Americans don't need to use such destructive force to fight their enemies," an Iraqi citizen told IOL.

Show Of Strength

On Tuesday night, the U.S.-led occupation called in air support against targets in central Baghdad for the first time since its spring invasion, deafening the capital with repeated salvoes of aerial cannon fire in another show of strength.

In one of a spate of barrages that punctured the evening festivities that normally characterize the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, nearly 40 separate rounds were audible across the city as part of Operation Iron Hammer, a massive military offensive launched in and around Baghdad on November 12.

A U.S. military spokesman said five separate locations from which mortar or rocket attacks had been launched on the U.S. heavily fortified compound were targeted in the evening's raids.

"These targets were struck using an aerial platform with 105 mm cannon fire and 40 mm gunfire," the spokesman said without specifying whether the aircraft were fixed-wing or helicopters.

Air support has been called in several times north and west of the capital, but Tuesday's was only the second reported incidence in Baghdad itself.

Further north outside Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, U.S. forces pounded alleged resistance positions with mortar fire for a third consecutive night late Tuesday.

A-10 from the 74th Fighter Squadron drops flares over Kirkuk during the all-out operation

A platoon positioned itself in a dusty field outside the town, to fire mortar rounds from atop armored personnel carriers, flanked by combat tanks.

To boost the menacing effect of the display of firepower, the mortars were launched two at a time in rapid succession, targeting fields the military says had been used in attacks against occupation forces.

Flashes lit up the night sky and huge explosions rocked the ground as the mortars hit their targets.

Since the launching of the Operation Ivy Cyclone II on Sunday, the U.S. forces have fired two satellite-guided missiles, several helicopter-launched Hellfire missiles, as well as mortar and tank rounds, at safe houses, alleged training grounds and other positions they say are used by former regime loyalists to attack them.