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The "funnel of death" in Tal Afar

Sunday Telegraph:

A huge force of American and Iraqi troops began storming the narrow alleyways of a rebel-held "funnel of death" yesterday, in one of the biggest anti-insurgency operations since the siege of Fallujah last November.

About 5,000 soldiers, backed by United States aircraft and armoured vehicles, battered down walls and conducted house-to-house searches in an attempt to flush out several hundred guerrillas holed up in Tal Afar, a large town 60 miles from the Syrian border.

Tal Afar's maze of twisting streets and passageways has been a hotbed of insurgency for almost two years and an important staging post for fighters from abroad.

Yesterday saw the start of an all-out assault designed to bring it under coalition control for the first time, with sounds of heavy gunfire echoing through the streets.

More than 200 insurgents had been arrested there in initial skirmishes over the past week, said the US military. Iraqi officials claimed a further 141 rebel fighters had been killed.

The description seems a little over dramatic for the results. The operation is in someways similar to the Israeli operation in Jenin, without the absurd charges of massacre. It appears that if Arab forces are also involved it is not a massacre. I don't think I have ever heard the Syrian attack on Hama described as a massacre either for that matter, but it was. This was not. The US and Iraqi forces did a good job of seperating the civilians from the insurgents who try to camoflage themselves as civilians. By banning civilians from carrying weapons the insurgents became more exposed.