Iraqi snipers work in teams to hit Marines

FALLUJAH, Iraq — The Marine regiment that fought its way from Kuwait to Baghdad a year ago finds itself facing a new kind of enemy — Iraqi snipers working in teams and taking up posts in places such as mosque minarets.

Insurgents yesterday wounded two Marines in sniper attacks, even as Fallujah’s clerics and officials from the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council kept talking to try to arrange a permanent cease-fire.

Just hours after the cease-fire was announced Friday, Cpl. Jason Lee, 26, of Syracuse, N.Y., opened a Red Crescent ambulance full of rocket-propelled grenades that the 1st Battalion’s 5th Regiment had confiscated from one of the city’s many mosques.

“I did a quick count of what was inside, and within minutes they started shooting. There were two of us. We were pinned down and had to call in a tank,” Cpl. Lee said.

Cpl. Lee and many of the regiment’s Marines were the first to cross the Kuwaiti border just over a year ago. They pushed straight to Baghdad, where for 12 hours they battled through volley after volley of bullets before the guns fell silent and Saddam Hussein’s statue tumbled.

“This is far worse,” the corporal said. “This is the result of 13 gangs living in one area, and they’ve got the mosques. They come on the walkie-talkie all the time and say prayers. These people will not let go.”

It’s different from the last time, said Pfc. Jermaine Vincente, 21, of Toledo, Ohio.

“Back then we knew who we were fighting,” he recalled. “Now you talk to some guy, and the next minute he’s your enemy.”

In what is being called a cease-fire, the Marines are not allowed to conduct “offensive operations.” They can fight back only if fired on.

The grumbling can be heard everywhere. “Let us finish the job,” said one.

Many U.S. troops complained of politicians getting in the way. The most common question for a visiting reporter, however, was whether the American people still supported them.

The subject came up repeatedly, as if it had been embedded in military culture as a shadow of the Vietnam era that few of the men here are even old enough to remember.

For the first three or four days, insurgents sprayed mortars, rockets and bullets indiscriminantly wherever there were Marines. Before Fallujah, it is doubtful where any Marine here had seen an Iraqi raise an AK-47 rifle to the shoulder and aim. The preferred local way was to spray bursts from the hip.

Later in the week, snipers began to turn up, with optical sights on rifles. Some would work in pairs.

One would shoot and the other would wait for the Marines to move forward in response and try to shoot them in the back.

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